THE AGE OF

CHAUCER
ESTUDIOS SOCIOLITERARIOS
JULIO SOTELO, ALEJANDRA GUERRERO, AILIN PAZ, AYLEN
CAIZARES, AYELEN NIEVE, SILVANA SILVA, MARIANA
CRUZ BALCAZAR, ALBARRACIN BARBARA.

The age of Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer was born in 1340 and died in 1400. Chaucer lived the last sixty years
of the 14th century. So that century is the age of Chaucer. Looking throw a timeline,
many events took place in it.
Development
Supremacy of English
language of Parliament
Peasants Revolt 1381
Edward III
1327-1377

Richard II
1377-1399

Henry IV
1399-1413

14th century

1340

1400

Geoffrey Chaucer

Hundred Years War

1337 (starts)

1453 (ends)
Social and religious upheaval:
-Anticlericalism
-Papal schism
-Peasants revolt-1381

The Black Death

Changes in Medieval customs:
1347/49
-Feudalism service
-Scholasticism
-Woollen industry
-Growth of capitalism

Kings that ruled England:

married
Philip III

Henry III
1116-1172

Eleanor
Of Providence

Edward I
1272-1307

Edmund Earl of Lancaster

France
Philip IV
married
Louis X

Philip V

Charles IV

Isabella

Henry
Edward II
1307-1327

Earl of Lancaster
Henry

Edward III
1327-1377

Duke of Lancaster
married
Blanche

Edward

John of Gaunt

The Black Prince

Duke of Lancaster

Richard II
1377-1399

Edward III: 1327-1377

Henry IV
1399-1413

Richard II: 1377-1399

Thomas

Edward III
His father, Edward II left the work of
government to household favourites.
Soon a party of Lords was formed against
him. His wife, the French Kings daughter
turned against him. She and her lover,
Roger Mortimer seized Edward with the
help of foreign soldiers and Parliament
forced him to hand over the crown. His
son Edward III was only fifteen and for
three years his mother and Mortimer
ruled in his name. When Edward was on
age took possession of the crown,
imprisoned her mother for life and sent
Mortimer to London where he was
hanged in public like a thief.

Richard II
On Edward IIIs death the country was in
serious trouble. French ships attacked the
southern parts. Richard was only ten
years and the government was in hands
of his uncle, the duke of Lancaster,
known as John of Gaunt (who had royal
ambitions for his own son: Henry). In
1398 Richard declared to himself to be on
age and he ruled as a moderate king. He
married the daughter of Charles VI of
France. He adopted French tastes and
ideas, and used his power to get rid to
anyone who might be a danger to him.
Powerful Lords were arrested, included
John of Gaunt and his son Henry of
Lancaster was sent out of the country.

The Hundred Years War:

Edward III claimed the French crown throw his mother Isabelle who was daughter of
Philip IV and granddaughter of Philip III. He also could not forget that once western
France had belonged by right to Henry II.
Another event that made Edward claim the French was the fact that they were spoiling
his country wool trade. As they refused his claim he started to fight for it and the
conflict with France, which is known as the Hundred Years War, began in 1337. But
fade stopped the war. A terrible disease which English men called The Black Death
swept across Europe with a very murderous effect. A third of England population died
and for seven years there was peace. Then fight began again.
The conflict between England and France is divided into two phases:
Under Edward III (1337-1360)
Under Henry V and Henry VI (1444-1453)
Development of Parliament:
Under Edward who was busy with his wars, Parliament developed towards its present
form. Parliament is divided into three parts:
A House of Commons
A House of Lords
A small permanent Council (composed by Kings official advisers)
The Representatives of the Commons began to meet and discuss their business before
joining the Lords, and express to them their opinions. In this time the Acts of Parliament
took place. This Acts had all the force of law.
Supremacy of English Language:

Edward III ordered that only English should be spoken in the courts and schools, and
other public places. The nobles began to use it among themselves. In 1362 cases in law
courts were pleaded in English. In the following year the Chancellor opened Parliament
with an address in English.
The Black Deaths Effect:
The Black Death had a sudden violent effect in English society.
Half the clergy died
Great loss of population implied a decrease of servants and an increase of wages
Price rose and rents fell
Form of rental replaced the feudal system of labour services
Some landowners stopped growing crop and used their land for sheep
Woollen Industry:
Because of the loss of population and the agricultural depression that followed the
Black Death England began to develop its own woollen industry. The government
encouraged the cloth industry. A system of separation functions of production was
developed. The textile industry became Englands first big business.
Some Changes of Medieval Customs:
Many Medieval foundations continued to prosper:
The rule of law by the consent of the communities of the realm
The universities
The common law
The kings council
The most important change during Chaucers life was the break-up of the feudal manor.
All this began to change as consequence of Black Death when wages and rents took
place in England.
The English Church had promoted education. The Church had the monopoly of
knowledge, work and educational methods. Gradually new schools were opened
independently of monasteries. Scholasticism faded.
Anticlericalism:
The spiritual vigour of the Church declined rapidly. Angry protest against the wealth an
immorality of the Church became more strident. The church also suffered when the
papal seat was moved to Avignon. Parliament by different statutes penalized the
Church. An Oxford professor of influence talked against ecclesiastical ownership of land.
Peasants Revolt:
John of Gaunt took the government in his hands because Richard was not in age for the
crown. A tax was collected to fight the French but people refused to pay it. The
frustrations and social changes brought by the Black Death, the changing economy,
and the Statute of Labourers (1351), which was an Act of Parliament to freeze both
wages and prices, made crowds grew angry. The Peasants Revolt began in the two
south eastern counties of Essex and Kent. The insurgents, led by Wat Tyler and Jack
Straw marched to London objecting taxes without freedom, demanding an end of
feudal service; they want to pay rent for their farms instead.
In a middle of a public meeting the major of London killed Wat Tyler. Only the young
Richards courage saved the situation. Parliament declared that the whole trouble was
caused by evil official practices and recommended a general pardon and only the
leaders were tried and hanged. Gradually the Lords gave up their claims to feudal

system and accepted rent instead. Serfs were still not free, but many found their
freedom by escaping to some distant counties.

The Black Death

The Black Death is the name for a terrible disease that spread throughout Europe from
1347 to 1350. There was no cure for the disease and it was highly contagious.
The plague likely started in Asia and traveled westward along the Silk Road. The
disease was carried by fleas that lived on rats. Historians think that black rats living on
European merchant ships caught the disease, eventually bringing it to Europe.
It's hard to imagine how scary life was in the Middle Ages during the Black Death. By
the time the disease ran its course, it had killed at least one third of the people in
Europe and probably more. In Paris, France it's estimated that around 800 people died a
day. There were so many dead that they couldn't bury them. They had to carry them to
massive pits.
Unfortunately, the people in the Middle Ages didn't know that the disease was carried
by rats. This made larger cities and towns, which were very dirty during the Middle
Ages, especially dangerous as there were lots of rats there. Sometimes entire towns or
villages were wiped out by the plague.
There was panic. Many people were sure it was the end of the world. People locked
their doors and tried to hide in their houses. However, this did little good in cities where
rats, and therefore fleas, were everywhere. They also burned down houses and even
entire villages to try to stopped disease.
Today we call this disease the bubonic plague. Very few people get the disease today
and most of those that do recover fine. When people got the disease in the Middle
Ages, they almost always died. People would get really sick including black and blue
blotches all over their body.
Much of the infrastructure of Europe was gone when the Black Death finally subsided.
It's estimated that it took around 150 years for Europe to rebuild.
Facts about the Black Death

Many people thought that the Black Death was punishment from God.

It is estimated that somewhere between 75 million and 200 million people died
of the plague.

Some scientists think it was a bacteria called Yersinia pestis that caused the
disease.

The plague was not called the Black Death until many years later. Some think it
was called this because of how the skin turned dark at the late stages of the
disease, but it was more likely called "Black" to reflect the dark and horrible time
in history.

Some people thought that pockets of bad air released by earthquakes caused the
plague. Others went so far as to blame Jewish people for bringing the plague to
kill Christians.

The epide mic returned to Europe several times, but wasn't as bad as the Black
Death period.

Trade and industry

In the fourteen century England was the chief wool-growing country of Europe. The
Cistercians had converted the wild valleys of yorkshire into prosperous sheep farms;
the Cotswolds were another important sheep-rearing district. The chief or staple
exports of England were wool, hides, leather, and tin; and of these wool was by far the
most important. It was sold to the great cloth manufacturing cities of Flanders, like
Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres.
Agricultural prosperity, increasing population, and the growth of woolen exports took
place in the first part of the century. Then with the loss of population and the
agricultural depression that followed the Black Death, England began to develop its
own woolen industry, instead of letting foreigners continue to profit by importing
English wool, spinning and weaving it, and selling it back as a finished product. In 1363
the King granted Calais a Monopoly as the sole staple town in the export of the wool.
The staple was moved to Calais and remained there for the rest of the reign. But
Edward IIIs great work was to transform England from a wool-exporting country into a
cloth manufacturing and exporting country. The government also encouraged the cloth
industry since cloth had a much wider market than wool. To manufacture cloth the
putting out system was developed which permitted English capitalists unlimited
expansion by separating functions of production. The Merchants could give as many
small, contracts to weavers, dyers, or spinners as they were able to market. The
textile industry became Englands first big business.
Since Saxon days english wool had been sent abroad, especially to belgium, to make
fine cloth. Much of this cloth had then come back to England for sale. Norwich was the
center of the new industry and was the largest city after London.
A statute proclaimed the most liberal treatment to foreign weavers: all the cloth
workers of strange lands, which will come into england, wales and scotland within the
king's power, shall come safely and surely, and shall be in the king's protection and
safe conduct, to dwell in the same lands choosing where they will. A century after
Edwards death, the cloth industry which he had re-started had made England rich. The
hundred years war was not an adventure for military plunder and dynastic ambition, it
was also an attempt to keep open the market for wool and cloth trade in Flanders and
France. The beginning of the capitalist as organizer of industry were found during the
same period in the cloth manufacture.
During the lifetime of Chaucer the production of broadcloth was increased nine fold. So
the cloth trade held its place as incomparably the most important English industry.
Capitalism as the organizer of industry is first clearly visible in the cloth trade.
Merchants of the staple
In the fourteenth century, during the life time of Chaucer, the english town was a
center of industry and commerce. It is important to know that the word staple in its
primary use, appears to have a meant a particular port or other place to which certain

commodities were obliged to be brought to be weighted or measured for the payment

of the customs, before they could be sold or in some cases imported or exported. The
people to whom the king granted the sole right of exporting goods from England were
called The Merchants. They were incorporated or at least recognized as forming a
society with certain privilages.
It was then convinient to fix a Staple town or towns to collect taxes. The first town or
special centre of commerce was Bruges (1340) then the king named ten of the chief
towns in England as Staple towns: Newcastle, York, Lincoln, Canterbury were among
them.
The Merchants of the Staple Company was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1319 but it
acquired commercial significance whenit was transfered to Calais, under English rule
from 1347 by king Edward III.
It was the King who then stopped the import of clothes in order to encourage the
manufacture of good cloth in England so the capitalist growth. This had an important
social effect. In big towns the weaving and every other trade were controled by guilds.
They controled prices and wages and the training workers too. Their leader form the
borough council whose chairman was the mayor.
In London he was given the special Rank of Lord Mayor. In fact this ancient system
keeps up to date.
Today the Company runs a growing charitable trust with scholarships and projects in
the wool, textile, and agricultural sectors as well as university student travel bursaries.
Religion discontent
Peasant discontent was also inspired by the growing criticism of the church. The
spiritual vigour of the church had declined rapidly in 14 th century, the indicative is that
no Englishmen was canonized in that century. Furthermore the English church suffered
when the papal seat was moved by the French to Avignon (1305-1378) England with
national sentiment and at war with France resented such papal subservience to their
enemy and parliament proceeded to penalized the pro French popes by a series of
statutes. The statute of Provisors (1351) made the acceptance of church office without
royal consent a criminal offence .In 1366 parliament repudiated the agreement to pay
the annual tribute to the pope. The King John had begun.
The bishop in the age of Chaucer were able, hardworking, highly respectable men. They
gave their lives to the service of the State.
The pope thrust foreign favourites into many rich benefices ,but as part of the bargain
he usually left the appointment of bishop in royal hand .So the king paid his ministers
and civil servants not out of the public taxes but out of the episcopal revenues.
The monk in Chaucer s England were worldly and well in do, living lives of comfort in
monastery. They were not in numerous .They performed in person their obligation of
prayers and masses for the living and the dead.

The Peasants Revolt

The economic changes and the dissatisfaction with the Statute of Labourers culminated
in the Peasants revolt which took place in June 1381.Union of Labourers wanted to
resist the custom of the law fixing wages and the union of villain farmers wanted to
resist the custom of the manor striving for freedom. A violent system of punishments
for offenders was usually enough to put off peasants from causing trouble. Most areas
in England also had castles in which soldiers were garrisoned, and these were usually
enough to guarantee reasonable behaviour among medieval peasants.
An army of peasants from Kent and Essex marched on London. They did something noone had done before or since they captured the Tower of London. The Archbishop of
Canterbury and the Kings Treasurer were killed. The king, Richard II, was only 14 at
the time but despite his youth, he agreed to meet the peasants at a place called Mile
End.
There were three reasons why the peasants were angry about
1. After the Black Death, many manors were left short of workers. To encourage those
who had survived to stay on their manor, many lords had given the peasants on their
estates their freedom and paid them to work on their land. Now, nearly 35 years after
the Black Death, many peasants feared that the lords would take back these privileges
and they were prepared to fight for them.
2. Many peasants had to work for free on church land, sometimes up to two days in the
week. This meant that they could not work on their own land which made it difficult to
grow enough food for their families. Peasants wanted to be free of this burden that
made the church rich but them poor. They were supported in what they wanted by a
priest called John Ball from Kent.
3. There had been a long war with France. Wars cost money and that money usually
came from the peasants through the taxes that they paid. In 1380, Richard II introduced
a new tax called the Poll Tax. This made everyone who was on the tax register pay 5p.
It was the third time in four years that such a tax had been used. By 1381, the peasants
had had enough. 5p to them was a great deal of money. If they could not pay in cash,
they could pay in kind, such as seeds, tools etc., anything that could be vital to survival
in the coming year.
In May 1381, a tax collector arrived at the Essex village of Fobbing to find out why the
people there had not paid their poll tax. He was thrown out by the villagers. In June,
soldiers arrived to establish law and order. They too were thrown out as the villagers of
Fobbing had now organised themselves and many other local villages in Essex had
joined them. After doing this, the villagers marched on London to plead with the young
king to hear their complaints.

One man had emerged as the leader of the peasants Wat Tyler from Kent. As the
peasants from Kent had marched to London, they had destroyed tax records and tax
registers. The buildings which housed government records were burned down. They got
into the city of London because the people there had opened the gates to them.
By mid-June the discipline of the peasants was starting to go. Many got drunk in London
and looting took place. It is known that foreigners were murdered by the peasants. Wat
Tyler had asked for discipline amongst those who looked up to him as their leader. He
did not get it.
On June 14th, the king met the rebels at Mile End. At this meeting, Richard II gave the
peasants all that they asked for and asked that they go home in peace. Some did.
Others returned to the city and murdered the archbishop and Treasurer their heads
were cut off on Tower Hill by the Tower of London. Richard II spent the night in hiding in
fear of his life.
On June 15th, he met the rebels again at Smithfield outside of the citys walls. It is
said that this was the idea of the Lord Mayor (Sir William Walworth) who wanted to get
the rebels out of the city. Medieval London was wooden and the streets were cramped.
Any attempt to put down the rebels in the city could have ended in a fire or the rebels
would have found it easy to vanish into the city once they knew that soldiers were after
them.
At this meeting, the Lord Mayor killed Wat Tyler. We are not sure what happened at this
meeting as the only people who could write about it were on the side of the king and
their evidence might not be accurate. The death of Tyler and another promise by
Richard to give the peasants what they asked for, was enough to send them home.
By the summer of 1381, the revolt was over. John Ball was hanged. Richard did not
keep any of his promises claiming that they were made under threat and were
therefore not valid in law. Other leaders from both Kent and Essex were hanged. The
poll tax was withdrawn but the peasants were forced back into their old way of life
under the control of the lord of the manor.
However, the lords did not have it their own way.
Language and Literature
Chaucer (c.1343-1400) was the first great poet writing in English, whose best-known
work is 'The Canterbury Tales'.He is remembered as the author ofThe Canterbury
Tales, which ranks as one of the greatest epic works of world literature. Chaucer made
a crucial contribution to English literature in using English at a time when much court
poetry was still written in Anglo-Norman or Latin.
Geoffrey Chaucer was born between 1340 and 1345, probably in London. His father was
a prosperous wine merchant. We do not know any details of his early life and education,
but his works show that he could read French, Latin, and Italian.

In 1357, he was a page to Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster, wife of Edward III's third son.
Chaucer was captured by the French during the Brittany expedition of 1359, but was
ransomed by the king. Edward III later sent him on diplomatic missions to France,
Genoa and Florence. His travels exposed him to the work of authors such as Dante,
Boccaccio and Froissart.
Around 1366, Chaucer married Philippa Roet, a lady-in-waiting in the queen's
household. They are thought to have had three or four children. Philippa's sister,
Katherine Swynford, later became the third wife of John of Gaunt, the king's fourth son
and Chaucer's patron. Between 1367 and 1378 Chaucer made several journeys abroad
on diplomatic and commercial missions
In 1374, Chaucer was appointed comptroller of the lucrative London customs. In 1386,
he was elected member of parliament for Kent, and he also served as a justice of the
peace. In 1389, he was made clerk of the king's works, overseeing royal building
projects. He held a number of other royal posts, serving both Edward III and his
successor Richard II. This was a period of great creativity for Chaucer, during which he
produced most of his best poetry, among others Troilus and Cressida (c. 1385), based
on a love story by Boccaccio.
Chaucer's first major work was 'The Book of the Duchess', an elegy for the first wife of
his patron John of Gaunt. Other works include 'Parlement of Foules', 'The Legend of
Good Women' and 'Troilus and Criseyde'. In 1387, he began his most famous work, 'The
Canterbury Tales', in which a diverse group of people recount stories to pass the time
on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. Chaucer did not begin working on The Canterbury
Tales until he was in his early 40s. The book, which was left unfinished when the author
died, depicts a pilgrimage by some 30 people, who are going on a spring day in April to
the shrine of the martyr, St. Thomas Becket. On the way they amuse themselves by
telling stories. Among the band of pilgrims are a knight, a monk, a prioress, a plowman,
a miller, a merchant, a clerk, and an oft-widowed wife from Bath. The stories are
interlinked with interludes in which the characters talk with each other, revealing much
about themselves.
Chaucer disappears from the historical record in 1400, and is thought to have died soon
after. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in the part of the church, which afterwards
came to be called Poet's Corner. A monument was erected to him in 1555.

The Language

Another really important thing relative to Chaucer is the language and how to approach
something that is written in Middle English. Chaucer was part of a movement in the
Middle Ages, and really all over the place, to write in what's called the vernacular. That
just means the language that people speak. In modern day, the vernacular is English;
there's no difference between the vernacular and the language literature is written in or

the language important people speak. At the time, important people spoke and wrote in
Latin. So, the idea of writing in the language of the people was a new idea. He wasn't
the only one who was doing this, but he was kind of a big early example of it.
It's also important to note that Chaucer's English - this is around 1100 or 1400 AD in
England - is called Middle English (Middle Ages, Middle English, makes sense), which is
not the same thing as Old English. This is a really important distinction. Old English was
around 800 AD - we're talking more Dark Ages than High Middle Ages. This is a favorite
quiz question, so do not be fooled! Chaucer wrote in Middle English, not Old English even though it is old, it's Middle English. Old English is a totally separate language. You
can actually tell pretty easily if something is in Middle English or Old English because
you cannot understand Old English at all. If you look at it, it has all these funky letters
in it. You know when you're looking at Old English. Just be warned - teachers love to ask
that question! So you can't understand Old English, but you can understand Middle
English.
It's a little frightening at first, but we're going to go through some lines from the
opening of The Canterbury Tales, the 'General Prologue'. We're just going to look at it
and go through how to parse it, how to look at it and come out with something we can
understand. I'm going to show you - it's not that hard. You can do it. We're going to do it
together, and then you're going to do it on your own. I'm going to read this, and it's
going to sound more foreign than it looks, so keep that in mind. Look at the text, and
listen to what I'm saying.

Susceptible to more than one interpretation, and some critics have related it to the
traditional exegetical way of interpreting the Scriptures historically, allegorically,
anagogically, and topologically.
Little is known of Langlands life: he is thought to have been born somewhere in the
regionI'm going to show you - it's not that hard. You can do it. We're going to do it
together, and then you're going to do it on your own. I'm going to read this, and it's
going to sound more foreign than it looks, so keep that in mind. Look at the text, and
listen to what I'm saying.

William Langland

William was (born c. 1330died c. 1400), presumed author of one of the greatest
examples of Middle English alliterative poetry, generally known as Piers Plowman, an
allegorical work with a complex variety of religious themes. One of the major
achievements of Piers Plowman is that it translates the language and conceptions of
the cloister into symbols and images that could be understood by the layman. In

general, the language of the poem is simple and colloquial, but some of the authors
imagery is powerful and direct.
There were originally thought to be three versions of Piers Plowman: the A version of
the text, which was the earliest, followed by the B and C versions that consisted of
revisions and further amplifications of the major themes of A. However, a fourth
version, called Z, has been suggested and the order of issue questioned. The version
described here is from the B text, which consists of (1) a prologue and seven passus
(divisions) concerned primarily with the life of man in society, the dangers of Meed
(love of gain), and manifestations of the seven capital sins; and (2) 13 passus
ostensibly dealing with the lives of Do-wel, Do-bet, and Do-best; in effect, with the
growth of the individual Christian in self-knowledge, grace, and charity.
In its general structure the poem mirrors the complexity of the themes with which it
deals, particularly in the recurring concepts of Do-wel, Do-bet, and Do-best, all in the
end seen as embodied in Christ. They are usually identified with the active,
contemplative, and mixed religious life, but the allegory of the poem is often
susceptible to more than one interpretation, and some critics have related it to the
traditional exegetical way of interpreting the Scriptures historically, allegorically,
anagogically, and topologically.
Little is known of Langlands life: he is thought to have been born somewhere in the
region of the Malvern Hills, in Worcestershire, and if he is to be identified with the
dreamer of the poem, he may have been educated at the Benedictine school in Great
Malvern. References in the poem suggest that he knew London and Westminster as well
as Shropshire, and he may have been a cleric in minor orders in London.
Langland clearly had a deep knowledge of medieval theology and was fully committed
to all the implications of Christian doctrine. He was interested in the asceticism of St.
Bernard of Clairvaux, and his comments on the defects of churchmen and the religious
in his day are nonetheless concomitant with his orthodoxy.

Theme:
Langland's theme is nothing less than the history of Christianity as it unfolds both in the
world of the Old and new Testaments and in the life and heart of an individual
fourteenth-century Christian--two seemingly distinct realms between which the poet's
allegory moves with dizzying rapidity. The poet describes fourteenth-century English
society in terms of its failure to represent an ideal society living in accord with Christian
principles: Society's failure is attributable in part to the corruption of the church and
ecclesiastics, and whenever he considers clerical corruption, he pours our savagely
indignant satire. The failure of the wealthy laity--untaught by the church to practice
charity--to alleviate the sufferings of the poor.
Piers Plowman was widely read from the end of the fourteenth century to the reign of
Elizabeth I. The leaders of the Peasant's Revolt of 1381 used phrases borrowed from it

as part of the rhetoric of the rebellion. Langland's sympathy with the sufferings of the
poor and his indignant satire of official corruption undoubtedly made his poem popular
with the rebels, although he himself, despite his interest in social reform, remained a
fundamentally conservative and orthodox thinker. The passionate sympathy for the
commoner, idealized in the work, also appealed to reformers who felt that true religion
was best represented not by the ecclesiastical hierarchy but by the humblest orders of
society. Piers Plowman-- a prophecy and forerunner of the English Reformation
Juxtaposition of vision and actuality--the visions themselves present actuality as much
as they embody speculation and theological mysteries. In poetry only Chaucer
approaches this manifestation of a daily interweaving of the humdrum, or the sordid,
and the sublime.
Persona
The persona is both a partly fictional character subject to impressions of the human
and divine and also a vehicle conveying or embodying views, quests, questionings,
which may or may not have been the poet's own, or those of some of his
contemporaries. The poem is often called a spiritual autobiography; but this is a
simpliste description, the ironical result of the very vividness of Langland's presentation
of his dreamer. Thus at the end of the first and shortest recension (the 'A test'), as
readers we feel the gulf implied between learning and salvation to be so great as to be
unbridgeable; it was all too easy to suggest that the poet here cobbled up an ending,
and then began again, at Passus XI in his 'B text,' when he had new light.
The poet records a spiritual crisis that he experienced after a disputation with friars in
later years. The poem, like Dante's, is certainly in one sense a Pilgrim's Progress--but
hardly in Bunyan's sense; it describes not so much a spiritual journey (and journey was
the dominant sense of 'progress' in Bunyan's day) as an unfolding, a development,
stage by stage, passus by passus.
The allegory of a spiritual pilgrimage had taken impressive literary form forty years
before Langland wrote, in a work that became immediately popular and remained so for
three centuries. Guillaume de Deguileville had written his verse Pelerinage de la Vie
Humaine in 1331 and a revised and enlarged (indeed verbose) version had appeared in
1355. The seventy manuscripts (often illustrated) that survive testify to its popularity
and accessibility, though evidently no English versions were made before the fifteenth
century. There is no proof that Langland knew this subtle and elaborate work (if it
influenced Bunyan it must have been at several removes, and in simplified form). But
we can hardly avoid noting that it proceeds by the device of didactic dialogue that
Langland was to employ, and that some of its characters--e.g. Reason, Anima-- appear
in Piers Plowman, together with some of its distinctive features and images--e.g. the
author who poses as a nave narrator, or the barn which in Piers Plowman is Holy
Church and in the Pelerinage stands for Christ. These, like the figurative courts or
castles that appear in Passus V and IX suggest that directly or indirectly Langland was
influenced by the French tradition of didactic allegory.
The plowman who gives his name to the poem and who appears in such diverse
manifestations has no antecedent (or genuine successor). When he 'puts forth his head'

to address the puzzled pilgrims in the fifth passus a new chapter opens in English
literature, and rustic life takes on a new importance, a new value. Chaucer evidently
took note: he presents a ploughman who is sufficiently well-to-do and independent to
go on pilgrimage with his brother, a parish priest and a learned clerk.
The development of the poem is not linear, but neither circuitous; it is that of a helix, or
a corkscrew, in which, at certain points of rest, the Dreamer looks back at earlier
scenes and views them in a new perspective; the simplifications or exaggerations of
earlier views are thus tacitly or explicitly corrected. It is not altogether fanciful to regard
the spiral as circling round four crucial conceptions:
1) The Field of folk: an image of the material world, which narrows down to Piers' halfacre, widens again to be Middle-earth, is reduced to the tree of Charity growing in a
garden, and finally becomes wholly spiritualized, ploughed by the four evangelists and
sown with seed of the Spirit.
2) Holy Church: the repository of Truth--figured first as a high-towered castle (I); then as
an interior castle of the soul (v); then as the Ark--the 'shingled ship' of Passus IX; finally
as the barn of Unity (Passus XIX).
3) The theme of Pardon: introduced obliquely with the false Pardoner of the Prologue;
dramatized in Passsus VII; linked with the capital sins in the person of Haukin who
questions the efficacy of his priest's pardon; identified with the Christlike Piers (xix.
388).
4) The rood of the Crucifixion, round which the whole work revolves: the symbol of
Divine Love: so presented in Passus I, by Holy Church; by Repentance in Passus V; as
the scene of Christ's duel with Death, from which he emerges as Dux Vitae and Rex
Gloriae in Passus XVIII. Central as the death of Christ is to Langland's thought, the cross
does not figure as athe object of devotion, as it did in the art of his time, and in the
meditative and mystical writers--the scenes of agony that absorbed Julian of Norwich
are compassed. Langland's piety is spare, restrained, not affective.
The Dreamer:
At first a spectator, then an interlocutor, he gradually comes to participate in the
dream-action. The involvement corresponds to his growth as a self-questioning, selfcommuning, Christian. Development in self-knowledge characterizes the protagonists,
or the poetic personae, of the greatest fourteenth-century poems: Gawain similarly,
engaged on a more knightly quest, will emerge as a penitent figure aware for the first
time of his frailty. The allegorical figures that the Dreamer meets--Ymaginatif, Clergy,
Study, Patience, represent qualities that he comes to value and even to assimilate. If at
the close it is Conscience who becomes a pilgrim walking the world as the poetdreamer does at the beginning, it is because only now is the Dreamer's Conscience
fully apprised of the Person that he must seek.
The poem reflects the actualities of Christian experience, the tension of an intensely
serious and disturbed intelligence, rooted firmly in orthodox belief and practice yet
alive to the disruption facing feudal society, and troubled by the failure of the Church
and the religious orders to meet the crisis. If the poem is not spiritual autobiography, it

does reflect the struggle and aspiration of the poet to provide some light in the
darkness for his fellow Christians. And at the close the reader has come to share,
through the intermediacy of the Dreamer, his moods, his meditations, his exaltations.
The Dreamer has allied himself to us by his very imperfections, his stubborn
insistences.
Gender and personification -- Female forms/bodies
In the Dreamer's encounter with Lady Holy Church we trace certain tensions in the
masculine perception of an idealized body of the Church in female form; in the story of
the marital fortunes of the more mobile figure of Meed of the Maid we see how the
reward-dynamic of contemporary society is apprehended by the Dreamer. Meed seems
to embody at various stages both the dynamic of a reward-based society and its most
common currency: material gifts and money. That she embodies an antithetical social
order to that of Lady Holy Church and/or represents a lower social class are
interpretations which depend on whose 'version' of Meed is being represented at any
particular time in the Dreamer's vision. Her changing form (e.g. from illegitimate rich
maid to legitimate 'muliere' to common whore) is an index of the contested definition of
her proper name. In the story of the changing marital prospects of this very much manmade object of desire, no less than in the story of Lady Holy Church, we can see
something of the operations of the traffic in reward in the Dreamer's society and
something, too, of his society's 'traffic in women.' (Men have certain rights in their
female kin, and women do not have the same rights either to themselves or to their
male kin.)
By the fourteenth century, the iconography of the female form, the realization of the
figure of the Church as the Bride of Christ and as Mother Church had considerable
currency in the imagistic repertoire of Western Christianity.
It is significant that the Dreamer does not initially recognize the Lady in personal terms.
The authority of the Lady is signaled by her social orientation as an inhabitant of the
fixed and stable castle, and it is with an overwhelming sense of her "otherness" (in
class and gender terms) that the Dreamer begins his dialogue. Already we may observe
a discrepancy between the perception the Dreamer has of Lady Holy Church in an
idealized female form excluded, it seems, from his everyday life and the Lady's view of
herself, which insists on her spiritual reality and her social immanence.
Lady Holy Church emphasizes that the Dreamer's vision is socially determined yet
fictional; as is her representation within it. The 'real' Church is not female, nor
perfected, any more than 'real' Christians are likely to find their salvation by merely
dreaming.
Both Lady Holy Church and Meed represent projections of male desire, although the
desire for Meed seems to be more immediately recognizable by the Dreamer. When he
sees Meed, he too is ravished by her appearance (Passus II, 8-16). In the arrangement
of women, on the right and the left, Lady Holy Church and Meed the Maid, it seems as
though the Dreamer is drawing on a cultural clich, a version of the Mary/Eve
opposition, to express and explore other kinds of antithetical values, spiritual and
secular. One kind of polarized binary opposition in circulation in his culture (the splitting

of womankind into two opposed figures) provides him with a way into exploring other
kinds of oppositions: the dichotomy between the operations of the heavenly economy
of redemption and an earthly economy involving material reward appears to be aligned
to the split between Lady Holy Church's world of guaranteed truth (alienating and
mystifying though its language has proved to the Dreamer) and the context in which
her rival Meed is ensconced.
The Dreamer, in his visions, does not have access to a pure symbolic order: his visions,
his conceptualizing abilities, are socially based and culture bound. The female forms he
imagines are figured as social beings, with particular class-based interests (which in the
case of Lady Holy Church and Meed the Maid appear to be in competition), not actually
as females in the abstract (something which is virtually impossible to figure in isolation
anyway). The language of femininity, of feudalism, of mercantilism (to name just three
of the discourses in combination here) are in dialogue in the figures of Lady Holy
Church and Meed the Maid, just as these figures are engaged in dialogues with the
male figures who are around them, whose own access to social, material, spiritual
capital is a variable (and in these stakes the Dreamer seems a poor man all round).
JOHN WYCLIFFE (1320-1384)
John Wycliffe was a theologian and early proponent of reform in the Roman Catholic
Church during the 14th century. With the help of his followers, called the Lollards, a
heretical group, propagated his controversial views, and many other faithful scribes,
Wycliffe produced dozens of English language manuscript copies of the scriptures in
1380s AD. They were translated out of the Latin Vulgate, which was the only source
text available to Wycliffe and he is considered the main precursor of the Protestant
Reformation.
Wycliffe received his formal education at the University of Oxford, where his name has
been associated with three colleges, Queens, Merton, and Balliol. He became a regent
master in arts at Balliol in 1360 and was appointed master of the college, but he
resigned in 1361 to become vicar of Fillingham, the colleges choicest living, or church
post. There is some doubt as to whether or not he became soon afterward warden of
Canterbury Hall. In 1363 and 1368 he was granted permission from the bishop of
Lincoln to absent himself from Fillingham in order to study at Oxford, though in 1368 he
exchanged Fillingham for Ludgershall. He became a bachelor of divinity about 1369 and
a doctor of divinity in 1372.
The root of the Wycliffes reformation movement must be traced to his Bible study and
to the ecclesiastical-political lawmaking of his times. He was well acquainted with the
tendencies of the ecclesiastical politics to which England owed its position. He had
studied the proceedings of King Edward I of England, and had attributed to them the
basis of parliamentary opposition to papal usurpations. He found them a model for
methods of procedure in matters connected with the questions of worldly possessions
and the Church. Many sentences in his book on the Church recall the institution of the
commission of 1274, which caused problems for the English clergy. He considered that
the example of Edward I should be borne in mind by the government of his time; but
that the aim should be a reformation of the entire ecclesiastical establishment. Similar
was his position on the enactments induced by the ecclesiastical politics of Edward III,
with which he was well acquainted, which are fully reflected in his political tracts.

Wycliffe was still regarded by the Roman Catholic Church as trustworthy. It was difficult
to recognize him as a heretic. The controversies in which men engaged at Oxford were
philosophical rather than purely theological or ecclesiastical-political, and the method
of discussion was academic and scholastic. The kind of men with whom Wycliffe dealt
included the Carmelite monk John Kyningham over theological questions, or
ecclesiastical-political ones. Wycliffe regarded it as a sin to incite the pope to
excommunicate laymen who had deprived wicked clergy of their temporalities, his
dictum being that a man in a state of sin had no claim upon government.
Wycliffe blamed the Benedictine and professor of theology at Oxford, William Wynham
of St. Albans (where the anti-Wycliffe trend was considerable) for making public
controversies which had previously been confined to the academic arena. Wycliffe
himself tells, how he concluded that there was a great contrast between what the
Church was and what it ought to be, and saw the necessity for reform. His ideas stress
the perniciousness of the temporal rule of the clergy and its incompatibility with the
teaching of Christ and the apostles, and make note of the tendencies which were
evident in the measures of the "Good Parliament.
Wycliffe wanted to see his ideas actualized, his fundamental belief was that the Church
should be poor, as in the days of the apostles.
The first to oppose his theses were monks of those orders which held possessions, to
whom his theories were dangerous. Oxford and the episcopate were later blamed by
the Curia, which charged them with so neglecting their duty that the breaking of the
evil fiend into the English sheepfold could be noticed in Rome before it was in England.
Wycliffe was summoned before William Courtenay, bishop of London, on Feb. 19, 1377,
in order "to explain the wonderful things which had streamed forth from his mouth."
The exact charges are not known, as the matter did not get as far as a definite
examination. Gaunt declared that he would humble the pride of the English clergy and
their partisans, hinting at the intent to secularize the possessions of the Church.
Most of the English clergy were irritated by this encounter, and attacks upon Wycliffe
began, finding their response in the second and third books of his work dealing with
civil government, his opponents charged Wycliffe with blasphemy and scandal, pride
and heresy. He appeared to have openly advised the secularization of English church
property, and the dominant parties shared his conviction that the monks could be
better controlled if they were relieved from the care of secular affairs.
Wycliffe wrote, The Church is the totality of those who are predestined to blessedness.
It includes the Church triumphant in heaven and the Church militant or men on earth.
No one who is eternally lost has part in it. There is one universal Church, and outside of
it there is no salvation. Its head is Christ. No pope may say that he is the head, for he
cannot say that he is elect or even a member of the Church.
From August 1380 until the summer of 1381, Wycliffe was in his rooms at Queens
College, busy with his plans for a translation of the Bible and an order of Poor Preachers
who would take Bible truth to the people. There were two translations made at his
instigation, one more idiomatic than the other. The most likely explanation of his
considerable toil is that the Bible became a necessity in his theories to replace the

discredited authority of the church and to make the law of God available to every man
who could read. The precise extent to which Wycliffe was involved in the creation of the
Lollards is uncertain. What is beyond doubt is that they propagated his controversial
views.
In 1381, the year when Wycliffe finally retired to Lutterworth, the discontent of the
laboring classes erupted in the Peasants Revolt. His social teaching was not a
significant cause of the uprising because it was known only to the learned, but there is
no doubt where his sympathies lay. He had a constant affection for the deserving poor.
The archbishop of Canterbury, Simon of Sudbury, was murdered in the revolt, and his
successor, William Courtenay (134796), a more vigorous man, moved against Wycliffe.
Many of his works were condemned at the synod held at Blackfriars, London, in May
1382; and at Oxford his followers capitulated, and all his writings were banned.
In 1382 Wycliffe suffered his first stroke at Lutterworth; but he continued to write
prolifically until he died from a further stroke in December 1384.
Most of Wycliffes post-Reformation, Protestant biographers see him as the first
Reformer, fighting almost alone the hosts of medieval wickedness. There has now been
a reaction to this, and some modern scholars have attacked this view as the delusion of
uncritical admirers.

The travels of Sir John Mandeville

The seventeenth-century writer Sir Thomas Browne declared that Sir John Mandeville
was "the greatest liar of all time." The travel book attributed to Mandeville, which first
appeared around 1371, was certainly one of the most popular books of the late Middle
Ages (hundreds of medieval manuscript copies of it have survived to the present day),
and it was definitely filled with bizarre fabrications. The name might have been adapted
from an earlier French romance titled Mandevie that also involved a hero who
embarked
on
an
imaginary
journey.
Browne's assessment of Mandeville's character is undermined by the fact that
Mandeville
probably
never
existed.
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville described the travels of an English knight who left
England around 1322 and journeyed throughout Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Persia, and
Turkey. The stories that Mandeville returned with were fantastic, by any measure. He
told of islands whose inhabitants had the bodies of humans but the heads of dogs, of a
tribe whose only source of nourishment was the smell of apples, of a people the size of
pygmies whose mouths were so small that they had to suck all their food through
reeds, and of a race of one-eyed giants who ate only raw fish and raw meat. All of this
fantasy was interwoven with other geographical descriptions that were perfectly
accurate.However, the author of the Travels brilliantly organized the eclectic travel
material into an artistic first-person narrative emphasizing the exotic wonders of the
Near and Far East, it is generally considered one of the finest works of imaginative
literature of the medieval period.
Sir John Mandeville English author

The authorship of Mandeville's Travels remains unknown. Historians cannot decide

whether the author was French or English, though they agree that the book was
originally composed in French. The book originally written in Norman French about 1360
and translated into 10 major European languages, including Latin, an English version
appearing about 1375 by the end of the century.The narrator Mandeville identifies
himself as a knight of St. Albans. Writing of his travels, which began on Michaelmas Day
(September 29) and from which he returned in 1356. The 14th-century chronicler Jean
dOutremeuse of Lige claimed that he knew the books true author, a local physician
named Jean de Bourgogne, and scholars afterward speculated that dOutremeuse
himself wrote the book. Modern historical research the actual author of
the Travels remains unknown.
It is not certain whether the books true author ever traveled at all, since he selected
his materials almost entirely from the encyclopaedias and travel books available to
him. The author enriched these itineraries with
accounts of the history, customs, religions, and legends of the regions visited, culled
from his remarkably wide reading, transforming and enlivening the originals by his
literary skill and genuine creative imagination. The lands that he describes include the
abode of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Although in his time Mandeville was famous as
the greatest traveler of the Middle Ages, in the ensuing age of exploration he lost his
reputation as a truthful narrator. His book, notwithstanding, has always been popular
and remains extremely readable.

Anexo

William I
1066-1087

Robert

The conqueror

William II, Rufus

1087-1100

Henry I
1100-1135

Married

Matilda
Married Henry V (a Holy Emperor)

William

Matilda

Geoffrey, the Plantagenet

(Count of Anjou)

Married

Married 1152
HenryIn
II 1135 he was two years onlyStephen
1154-1189
In 1154 succeeded Stephen 1135-1154

Eleanor

Richard I
1189-1199

John
1199-1216
Married

Philip III

Henry III
1116-1172

Eleanor
Of Providence

Edward I
1272-1307

Edmund Earl of Lancaster

France
Philip IV
Married
Louis X

Philip V

Charles IV

Isabella

Henry
Edward II
1307-1327

Earl of Lancaster
Henry

Edward III
1327-1377

Duke of Lancaster
Married
Blanche

Edward

John of Gaunt

The Black Prince

Duke of Lancaster

Richard II
1377-1399

Henry IV
1399-1413

Henry V
1413-1422

Henry VI
1422-1461

Thomas