CANTERBURY TALES (I) + other notes

Bede Notes textbook pages 74-82

• Five languages and four nations within Britain: English, British, Scots, and Picts and Latin made them unify and study in god and faith
• Writing about English history and most illiterate during period 
• Britain first inhabited by the Britons who crossed from Armorica, located in the South.
• Ireland is the largest island after Britain which lies in the west, Picts sett in the North.
• Picts aligned with the Scots 
• Nice weather and seasons and Isle seen as area of no poison and water can cure it, also abundant in food (fish, etc) 
• Geoffrey Chaucer: page to the wife of Lionel of Antewerp, a son of the ruler, Edward III, Chaucer was introduced to the English monarch, Married a lady in waiting of the queen.
• Chaucer had early poems based on works of European poets such as The Book of the Duchess
• Possibly inspired to write from his pilgrimage to Canterbury
• Incorporates speech and eloquence to English literature

The Canterbury Tales - (pgs. 95-115)

• “AABB” rhyming pattern throughout the poem/tale
• Each major form of medieval literature told through each character that relates to his or her personalities, narrator describes the start of spring; around this time of the year is when people begin to go on a pilgrimage
• The narrator desires to visit the relics of Saint Thomas Beckett in Canterbury Cathedral and he describes the start of his journey, as he joins a diverse group who happen to be taking the same journey and he then goes on to describing each traveler (29 total) who are all very different
• A story of stories with the bigger story being the pilgrimage to Canterbury
• Basically the story is about pilgrims were going to Canterbury to worship at the tomb of Thomas A becket who had been killed by a King of England because he wouldn't do something that was against his religion. As they walked along they each told a story, and Chaucer, the author, wrote down those poems. 
• Pilgrims include: a knight, the squire, the yeoman, a prioress, a second nun, a monk, a friar, a merchant, a clerk, a man of the law, a franklin, a weaver, a dyer, a carpenter, a tapestry-maker, a haberdasher, a cook, a shipman, a physician, a parson, a miller, a manciple, a reeve, a summoner, a pardoner, the wide of a bath, and Chaucer.