Периоды английской литературы. Карпова В.А - 15 стр.

the pilgrims provide for each other and at the same time they are a fuller
revelation of themselves, their interests, attitudes, and antagonisms. Most of the
pilgrims, like the merchant, the lawyer, the cook, the sailor, the ploughman, and
the miller, are ordinary people, but each of them can be recognized as a real
person with his or her own character. One of the most enjoyable characters, for
example, is the Wife of Bath. By the time she tells her story we know her as a
woman of very strong opinions who believes firmly in the need to manage
husbands strictly.
       Chaucer’s mastery of his art is rooted deep in past poetic practice and in
the civilization already centuries old. On the other hand, his originality marks a
new beginning. Chaucer was a very remarkable innovator. He adopted certain
modes, themes, and conventions of French and Italian medieval poetry to
English poetry for the first time. He developed the art of literature itself beyond
anything to be found in French or Italian or any other medieval literature. In the
“Canterbury Tales” he developed his art of poetry still further towards drama
and towards the art of the novel. The unity of the “Canterbury Tales” is not
altered by the fact that the whole poem as planned remained incomplete.
       The poet who is perhaps nearest to Chaucer is Gower. Gower’s verse (he
was Chaucer’s contemporary and friend) certainly implies the same social and
cultural milieu as Chaucer’s. In Gower’s English book, “Confessio Amantis”
(1390-3) – it is notable that of the three books he composed, one is in Latin, one
in French, one in English – we recognize again the well-bred, easy
conversational tone and manner that we are familiar with in Chaucer, and the
smooth – flowing - perhaps in Gower’s work, too smooth – flowing - verse. Yet
“Confessio Amantis”, for all its great length and considerable achievement in
workmanship, is a pale shadow compared not only with the “Canterbury Tales”
but also with the other poems of Chaucer.
       The principal interest of “Confessio Amantis” is as a collection of tales.
Many of them appear to have come originally from Ovid, and all appear to be
among the innumerable tales which were in circulation in this great age of tale-
telling and had become part of medieval tradition, both oral and written.
       Much of English medieval poetry - particularly the alliterative poems of
the West Midlands and the North-West – is very unlike Chaucer’s poetry in
important respects and, indeed, makes a most stimulating and interesting
contrast with it. These alliterative poems show by comparison in what respects
Chaucer was an innovator in English – the extent to which he brought English
poetry into accord with the poetry of France and Italy, and also what he did that
was new not only in English but in European literature.
       The masterpiece among the alliterative poems which have survived from
the fourteenth century is undoubtedly “Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight”. But
there are others which in their nature may properly be grouped with that
poem, and which are scarcely less masterly; these include the alliterative “Morte
Arthur”, “The Parlement of the Thre Ages”, and “The Destruction of Troy”.


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