31 Dez 1400 Jahr - The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400)

Beschreibung:

Chaucer can lay claim to being the first canonical English author - the first named author who is part of the backbone of Literature.

His Canterbury Tales are justly famous - at times bawdy, smutty, and funny, at times ingenious and adventurous, he tells a serious of tales in a series of different personas. He imagines a group of pilgrims, travelling to Canterbury, and, as a competition, each tells a tale. He is a master of comedy and satire, and a deeply entertaining writer. If you want somewhere to start, try the gloriously earthy Miller's Tale, or the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale

It is fascinating to put Chaucer next to Sir Gawain - it illustrates perfectly how England at the time was, linguistically, a very different country - hardly a single country at all. Sir Gawain is very Anglo-Saxon, linguistically, even employing Anglo-Saxon letter. Chaucer, writing in the South, is far more inflected with French and Latin, and is a form of English far more recognisable as Modern - you can read it with a simple glossary, without having to worry about grappling with Anglo-Saxon grammar.