Периоды английской литературы. Карпова В.А - 14 стр.

to the poetry of troubadours. The poem will also introduce the reader to a poetry
that was intimately associated with the spring festivals when both peasant and
courtly folk danced and celebrated the annual triumph of summer over winter.
This spring note continues right through Chaucer’s poetry.
       Although the sources which at different stages nourish Chaucer’s poetry
are many and diverse they are not at all literary. His principal “source” may
surely be said to be the English that was spoken around him and out of which he
made his poetry to express his direct observation and knowledge of the life
around him.
       Of Chaucer’s other poems, the most important are probably “Troylus and
Cryseyde”(c.1380-1385), and the “Legend of Good Women”(c. 1385) which
show already that poetic – dramatic genius in presenting scenes and persons
which is one of the characteristics of the “Canterbury Tales” (c. 1386-1400),
Chaucer’s greatest achievement. The “Canterbury Tales”, the great human
comedy of the literature of the Middle Ages, is what the modern reader will
probably read first. It will also be what he is most likely to return to again and
again. For depth of interest, for the wealth of its impressions of the human
comedy, and for its mature wisdom, it is unrivalled among Chaucer’s works.
       The “Canterbury Tales”, a collection of over twenty religious and secular
tales totalling altogether about 17000 lines – about half of Chaucer’s literary
production – are told by pilgrims on their journey from London to Canterbury.
They include several different short fictional genres like the religious parable,
the romance, and the fabliaux which in Chaucer’s hands have been shaped with
masterly comic art. While Chaucer’s collection exhibits remarkable stylistic
polish and variety, a common theme is the unresolved relation between art and
morality. Chaucer took great care to assure his readers that his stories would
give both pleasure and moral instruction. The “moral behind the story” was a
guarantee that the tales were more than mere entertainment.
       Most of the tales appear to be old traditional tales that were told in his age
of story – telling when there were rich oral as well as written traditions to draw
on. Some of the tales are based on old romances or “Breton lays”, others on
fabliaux or “merry tales”. But of almost every one he makes a work of the
maturest and wisest art. Yet where the art seems most mature, the traditional
roots are also the deepest. The Wife of Bath’s great dramatic monologue is a
brilliant new invention of sophisticated art. But it grows out of ancient roots,
partly the traditional flytings between man and his wife such as those between
Noah and his wife in the Miracle Plays. The Wife of Bath herself is a new type –
the bourgeois woman, one might call her – yet in essentials she is as old as
humanity.
       The diversity of the tales fulfils the promise of that initial diversity of
pilgrims presented in the Prologue, characters who are individuals and at the
same time are morally and socially representative. In the interludes between the
tales these “characters” are set in action, talking, disputing, and the tales
themselves are a livelier extension of their talk. These tales are the entertainment

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