Практикум по английскому языку (по истории Англии Средних веков). Пилипенко В.А - 14 стр.

VII. Reading.

1. Check the meanings of the words in your dictionary:
      related questions, ancient, to forbid, to imply, break, to escape,
inspiration, bulk.

2. Are the sentences true or false? Correct the false sentences:
     a) English civilisation doesn’t differ from that of France, Italy
and Germany.
     b) Most of the best things, created by people in Italy, are centred
about the countryside.
     c) Chaucer found his inspiration in the life of the cities.

3. Text for reading.

Read the text about Britain by Gordon Winter. It will be continued
after each unit.
       I believe that I know the answer to these related questions,though
it would take a second lifetime of study before I could claim to be sure.
I believe it is because English civilization differs from that of France
and Germany and Italy, and the other countries of Western Europe,
in that it is not emotionally based on cities (as the word civilization,
the culture of cities, normally implies) but is emotionally based on
the countryside.
       In Italy, with scarcely a break since Roman times, most of the
best things in life have centred on the towns, just as they did in the
city-states of Ancient Greece. The forests and mountains of the Italian
landscape were dark and forbidding and a traveller was glad to escape
from them into the man-made beauty of the towns. Yet Chaucer,
writing only a century later, looked outside the towns to find grace and
life and inspiration in the countryside.
       And from Chaucer the beauty of the English countryside has
remained the inspiration for the great bulk of our lyric poetry.




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