English Literature
reflect political and social conditions?
2. Tell briefly the story of Chaucer's life. What foreign influences are
noticeable? Name a few poems illustrating his three periods of work. What
qualities have you noticed in his poetry? Why is he called our first
national poet?
3. Give the plan of the _Canterbury Tales_. For what is the Prologue
remarkable? What light does it throw upon English life of the fourteenth
century? Quote or read some passages that have impressed you. Which
character do you like best? Are any of the characters like certain men and
women whom you know? What classes of society are introduced? Is Chaucer's
attitude sympathetic or merely critical?
4. Tell in your own words the tale you like best. Which tale seems truest
to life as you know it? Mention any other poets who tell stories in verse.
5. Quote or read passages which show Chaucer's keenness of observation, his
humor, his kindness in judgment, his delight in nature. What side of human
nature does he emphasize? Make a little comparison between Chaucer and
Shakespeare, having in mind (1) the characters described by both poets, (2)
their knowledge of human nature, (3) the sources of their plots, (4) the
interest of their works.
6. Describe briefly _Piers Plowman_ and its author. Why is the poem called
"the gospel of the poor"? What message does it contain for daily labor?
Does it apply to any modern conditions? Note any resemblance in ideas
between _Piers Plowman_ and such modern works as Carlyle's _Past and
Present_, Kingsley's _Alton Locke_, Morris's _Dream of John Ball_, etc.
7. For what is Wyclif remarkable in literature? How did his work affect our
language? Note resemblances and differences between Wyclif and the
Puritans.
8. What is _Mandeville's Travels_? What light does it throw on the mental
condition of the age? What essential difference do you note between this
book and _Gulliver's Travels_?
CHRONOLOGY, FOURTEENTH CENTURY
=======================================================================
HISTORY | LITERATURE
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1327. Edward III |
|
1338. Beginning of Hundred Years' |
War with France | 1340(?). Birth of Chaucer
|
1347. Capture of Calais |
|
1348-1349. Black Death | 1356. Mandeville's Travels
|
| 1359. Chaucer in French War
|
| 1360-1370. Chaucer's early
| or French period
|
1373. Winchester College, first |
great public school | 1370-1385. Chaucer's Middle or
| Italian period
1377. Richard II. Wyclif and the |
Lollards begin Reformation | 1362-1395. Piers Plowman
in England |
|
1381. Peasant Rebellion. Wat Tyler | 1385-1400. Canterbury Tales
|
| 1382. First complete Bible in
| English
|
1399. Deposition of Richard II. | 1400. Death of Chaucer
Henry IV chosen by Parliament| (Dante's Divina Commedia,
| _c_. 1310; Petrarch's
| sonnets and poems, 1325-1374;
| Boccaccio's tales, _c_.
| 1350.)
========================================================================
* * * * *
CHAPTER V
THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING (1400-1550)
I. HISTORY OF THE PERIOD
POLITICAL CHANGES. The century and a half following the death of Chaucer
(1400-1550) is the most volcanic period of English history. The land is
swept by vast changes, inseparable from the rapid accumulation of national
power; but since power is the most dangerous of gifts until men have
learned to control it, these changes seem at first to have no specific aim
or direction. Henry V--whose erratic yet vigorous life, as depicted by
Shakespeare, was typical of the life of his times--first let Europe feel
the might of the new national spirit. To divert that growing and unruly
spirit from rebellion at home, Henry led his army abroad, in the apparently
impossible attempt to gain for himself three things: a French wife, a
French revenue, and the French crown itself. The battle of Agincourt was
fought in 1415, and five years later, by the Treaty of Troyes, France
acknowledged his right to all his outrageous demands.
The uselessness of the terrific struggle on French soil is shown by the
rapidity with which all its results were swept away. When Henry died in
1422, leaving his son heir to the crowns of France and England, a
magnificent recumbent statue with head of pure silver was placed in
Westminster Abbey to commemorate his victories. The silver head was
presently stolen, and the loss is typical of all that he had struggled for.
His son, Henry VI, was but the shadow of a king, a puppet in the hands of
powerful nobles, who seized the power of England and turned it to self-
destruction. Meanwhile all his foreign possessions were won back by the
French under the magic leadership of Joan of Arc. Cade's Rebellion (1450)
and the bloody Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) are names to show how the
energy of England was violently destroying itself, like a great engine that
has lost its balance wheel. The frightful reign of Richard III followed,
which had, however, this redeeming quality, that it marked the end of civil
wars and the self-destruction of feudalism, and made possible a new growth
of English national sentiment under the popular Tudors.
In the long reign of Henry VIII the changes are less violent, but have more
purpose and significance. His age is marked by a steady increase in the
national power at home and abroad, by the entrance of the Reformation "by a
side door," and by the final separation of England from all ecclesiastical
bondage in Parliament's famous Act of Supremacy. In previous reigns
chivalry and the old feudal system had practically been banished; now
monasticism, the third mediæval institution with its mixed evil and good,
received its death-blow in the wholesale suppression of the monasteries and
the removal of abbots from the House of Lords. Notwithstanding the evil
character of the king and the hypocrisy of proclaiming such a creature the
head of any church or the defender of any faith, we acquiesce silently in
Stubb's declaration[105] that "the world owes some of its greatest debts to
men from whose memory the world recoils."
While England during this period was in constant political strife, yet
rising slowly, like the spiral flight of an eagle, to heights of national
greatness, intellectually it moved forward with bewildering rapidity.
Printing was brought to England by Caxton (_c_. 1476), and for the first
time in history it was possible for a book or an idea to reach the whole
nation. Schools and universities were established in place of the old
monasteries; Greek ideas and Greek culture came to England in the
Renaissance, and man's spiritual freedom was proclaimed in the Reformation.
The great names of the period are numerous and significant, but literature
is strangely silent. Probably the very turmoil of the age prevented any
literary development, for literature is one of the arts of peace; it
requires quiet and meditation rather than activity, and the stirring life
of the Renaissance had first to be lived before it could express itself in
the new literature of the Elizabethan period.
THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. The Revival of Learning denotes, in its broadest
sense, that gradual enlightenment of the human mind after the darkness of
the Middle Ages. The names Renaissance and Humanism, which are often
applied to the same movement, have properly a narrower significance. The
term Renaissance, though used by many writers "to denote the whole
transition from the Middle Ages to the modern world,"[106] is more
correctly applied to the revival of art resulting from the discovery and
imitation of classic models in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Humanism applies to the revival of classic literature, and was so called by
its leaders, following the example of Petrarch, because they held that the
study of the classics, _literae humaniores_,--i.e. the "more human
writings," rather than the old theology,--was the best means of promoting
the largest human interests. We use the term Revival of Learning to cover
the whole movement, whose essence was, according to Lamartine, that "man
discovered himself and the universe," and, according to Taine, that man, so
long blinded, "had suddenly opened his eyes and seen."
We shall understand this better if we remember that in the Middle Ages
man's whole world consisted of the narrow Mediterranean and the nations
that clustered about it; and that this little world seemed bounded by
impassable barriers, as if God had said to their sailors, "Hitherto shalt
thou come, but no farther." Man's mind also was bounded by the same narrow
lines. His culture as measured by the great deductive system of
Scholasticism consisted not in discovery, but rather in accepting certain
principles and traditions established by divine and ecclesiastical
authority as the basis of all truth. These were his Pillars of Hercules,
his mental and spiritual bounds that he must not pass, and within these,
like a child playing with lettered blocks, he proceeded to build his
intellectual system. Only as we remember their limitations can we
appreciate the heroism of these toilers of the Middle Ages, giants in
intellect, yet playing with children's toys; ignorant of the laws and
forces of the universe, while debating the essence and locomotion of
angels; eager to learn, yet forbidden to enter fresh fields in the right of
free exploration and the joy of individual discovery.
The Revival stirred these men as the voyages of Da Gama and Columbus
stirred the mariners of the Mediterranean. First came the sciences and
inventions of the Arabs, making their way slowly against the prejudice of
the authorities, and opening men's eyes to the unexplored realms of nature.
Then came the flood of Greek literature which the new art of printing
carried swiftly to every school in Europe, revealing a new world of poetry
and philosophy. Scholars flocked to the universities, as adventurers to the
new world of America, and there the old authority received a deathblow.
Truth only was authority; to search for truth everywhere, as men sought for
new lands and gold and the fountain of youth,--that was the new spirit
which awoke in Europe with the Revival of Learning.
II. LITERATURE OF THE REVIVAL
The hundred and fifty years of the Revival period are singularly destitute
of good literature. Men's minds were too much occupied with religious and
political changes and with the rapid enlargement of the mental horizon to
find time for that peace and leisure which are essential for literary
results. Perhaps, also, the floods of newly discovered classics, which
occupied scholars and the new printing presses alike, were by their very
power and abundance a discouragement of native talent. Roger Ascham
(1515-1568), a famous classical scholar, who published a book called
_Toxophilus_ (School of Shooting) in 1545, expresses in his preface, or