Transcript The Canterbury Tales - Neshaminy School District

Canterbury Tales
DECEMBER 15, 2014 – JANUARY ?, 2015
12/15/14 – 12/16/14
 Get a purple book
 Notes: p. 22 - 26 (The Medieval Period)
 Notes: p. 107 - 110 (Geoffrey Chaucer)
 Notes: p. 111 (The Canterbury Tales)
Economics: (p. 22)
 In 1085, to ensure his tax revenues and a
continuous flow of funds, William ordered the
compilation of a detailed survey of the land and
population of England, including every piece of
property, the number of workers and animals on it,
and the name of its owner. This so-called
Domesday Book, completed in 1086, gives modern
scholars an invaluable picture of English society at
the time. (Domesday is a variant of the word
doomsday, meaning “day of judgment,” and is
pronounced the same way.)
Sociology: (p. 22)
 In feudal society, the position of a woman depended on
that of her husband or father. A woman and her property
were always under the custody of a man – if she was
widowed, under that of her eldest son or her husband’s
overlord. Women’s principal occupation was the running
of their households; their other activities included such
tasks as spinning, weaving, and sewing. Although always
subservient to her husband, a woman held the same rank
in society as he. When her husband was absent from
home, she controlled not only the household but also
whatever land he owned. Thus, her responsibilities could
include authority over hundreds of people.
Architecture: (p. 22)
 The surviving Norman cathedrals are among the most
important examples of Romanesque architecture. Some
churches were built in gratitude to God, some as acts of
penitence – such as Battle Abbey, which William ordered
built near Hastings. Other churches were built on
pilgrimage routes. The construction on the great
cathedrals of Ely, Durham, Lincoln, Peterborough, and
Winchester all began in Norman times, with many of
them taking decades, some even centuries, to complete.
In all, after 1070, the Normans built hundreds of parish
churches. Massive in size and richly decorated, these
churches were modeled on Roman basilicas but
anticipated techniques of the later Gothic architecture.
Humanities: (p. 23)
 Eleanor (c. 1122 – 1204) was arguably the most powerful
woman in the 12th century. She was also a great
patroness of troubadours – poets who principally wrote
songs of courtly love but also wrote poems about religion
and politics. One of the tenets of the chivalric code was
that love of a lady ennobled a man, making him a better
knight or a better poet. Of course, the greater the lady’s
rank, the higher the prestige for her lover; so great ladies
tended to collect admirers. When her husband, Henry II,
imprisoned her in Winchester Castle in 1174 for siding
with her sons against him, Eleanor’s situation was much
lamented in song.
History: (p. 23)
 The Crusades (1096 – 1270) were the Christian
response to the expansion of Islam. The eight major
expeditions established the leadership of the Roman
Catholic Church and were a powerful expression of
the growing energy of the Christian civilization of
western Europe. For the knights who participated,
the Crusades were a combination of pilgrimage and
holy war. However, some knights, especially in the
later Crusades, participated in the quests for
personal gain, believing the eastern Mediterranean
area to be a region of great wealth ripe for plunder.
Literary History: (p. 23)
 Mystery, miracle, and morality plays were
tremendously popular until Shakespeare’s time,
when Protestant opposition put an end to them.
Town guilds were often responsible for producing
miracle plays, and a guild would often choose to
represent a subject connected with its members’
occupation. Carpenters or shipwrights, for example,
might stage the story of Noah’s ark.
Law: (p. 24)
 The king’s Great Council, which had come to be
called Parliament, was a meeting of the barons to
deal with legal cases, military issues, and taxation.
Perhaps because he wanted the general public to
understand and approve of his taxes, Edward I called
knights and town representatives, as well as nobles
and clergy, to Parliament. This set a precedent for
making Parliament a more representative body.
Economics: (p. 24)
 The Crusades fostered the development of a money
economy. New methods of taxation had to be
developed to finance them, and the capture of
wealthy Islamic cities exposed the Crusaders to a
finer way of life. As Europeans developed a taste for
Eastern products and the market for these grew, so
did trade and banking.
Government: (p. 24)
 Because every town was located on some lord’s lands, its
inhabitants were subject to the taxes and laws he
imposed. One of the important functions of the guilds
was to fight the lord’s control. By the 12th century,
however, towns were obtaining royal charters that gave
them the right to maintain their own municipal
governments, law courts, and systems of taxation.
Although the towns’ citizens still had to pay fees and
taxes to their lords, they did so collectively, thus avoiding
personal harassment. Farsighted lords, eager for the
revenues that towns and their markets could generate,
founded towns themselves.
Education: (p. 25)
 As the written word came into increasing use in government,
the church, and the courts, education became necessary for
advancement, and students gathered wherever teachers were
to be found. The term university was originally synonymous
with guild and referred to any organized group. Some
universities were organized by students to protect themselves
from having to pay excessive rents for classrooms and
exorbitant rates for food and lodging; some, such as Oxford
University, were originally organizations of teachers. Others
were outgrowths of municipal schools or of schools that
cathedrals maintained for the education of the clergy. After
mastering the seven liberal arts (grammar, rhetoric,
astronomy, logic, geometry, arithmetic, and music), a student
could receive a license to teach anywhere or could go on to
study civil law, medicine, or theology.
Literary History: (p. 25)
 Also popular in Europe were tales of Charlemagne’s
knights, or paladins. Characters such as Oliver,
Archbishop Turpin, Astolfo, Rinaldo, and the evil
Ganelon – whom Dante placed in Hell and Chaucer
cited as an exemplar of treachery in “The Nun’s
Priest’s Tale” – figured in many poems. The greatest
of Charlemagne’s legendary warriors was Roland, or
Orlando, who became the hero of the French Epic La
Chanson de Roland, and of the Italian romances
Orlando Innamorato and Orlando Furioso.
Language: (p. 26)
 After the English lost Normandy in 1204, English
gradually became the language of trade and
government in the country. In 1362, English became
the official language of the courts of law by royal
decree. The Middle English romances and the work
of Chaucer further bolstered the status of English by
legitimizing it as a literary language.
Literary History: (p. 26)
 As a teenager, Chaucer (1340/43 – 1400) joined
King Edward III’s army to fight the French in the
Hundred Years’ War. He was captured in 1359
during an unsuccessful siege on the fortified
northern French town or Reims, and the king
himself ransomed him. A few years later Chaucer
began his writings, producing such major works as
The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowls, and
the great love poem Troilus and Criseyde between
1369 and 1387. At that time he began his epic The
Canterbury Tales, which was incomplete at the time
of his death 13 years later.
History: (p. 26)
 On his mother’s side, Henry, son of Edmund Tudor, was
a direct descendant of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster,
by John’s morganatic* marriage to Katharine Roet. Ever
a practical man, Henry married Elizabeth of York to
settle the question of inheritance and bring the Wars of
the Roses to an end. Henry was the first monarch of the
Tudor dynasty.
 *of, relating to, or being a marriage between a member of a royal or
noble family and a person of inferior rank in which the rank of the
inferior partner remains unchanged and the children of the marriage
do not succeed to the titles, fiefs, or entailed property of the parent of
higher rank. "Morganatic." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d.
Web. 20 June 2014.
Seven Deadly Sins
AND THE CANTERBURY TALES
Seven Deadly Sins
 Seven deadly sins (Pope Gregory the Great
made up the list in the 6th century)
 Chaucer gave them character in The
Canterbury Tales
 Explanations taken from:
http://www.dummies.com/howto/content/the-seven-deadly-sins-of-thecatholic-church.html

"For Dummies." The Seven Deadly Sins of the Catholic Church - For Dummies. John Wiley & Sons,
Inc. . Web. 10 Mar 2013. <http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/the-seven-deadly-sins-of-thecatholic-church.html >.
Pride
 Pride: The inordinate love of self — a super-confidence and high
esteem in your own abilities also known as vanity. Pride fools you into
thinking that you’re the source of your own greatness.
 Liking yourself isn’t sinful. In fact, it’s healthy and necessary, but
when the self-perception no longer conforms to reality, and you begin
to think that you’re more important than you actually are, the sin of
pride is rearing its ugly head.
 Pride is the key to all other sins, because after you believe that you’re
more important than you actually are, you compensate for it when
others don’t agree with your judgment. You rationalize your behavior
and make excuses for lying, cheating, stealing, insulting, ignoring, and
such, because no one understands you like you do. In your mind,
you’re underestimated by the world.
 Humility is the best remedy for pride. Catholicism regards humility as
recognizing that talent is really a gift from God.
Envy
 Envy: Resenting another person’s good fortune
or joy. Catholicism distinguishes between two
kinds of envy:
Material envy is when you resent others who have
more money, talent, strength, beauty, friends, and so
on, than you do.
 Spiritual envy is resenting others who progress in
holiness, preferring that they stay at or below your level
instead of being joyful and happy that they’re doing
what they’re supposed to be doing. Spiritual envy is far
worse and more evil than material envy.

 The Church maintains that meekness or kindness
can counter envy.
Lust
 Lust: Looking at, imagining, and treating others
as mere sex objects to serve your own physical
pleasures, rather than as individuals made in the
image and likeness of God.
 The Catholic Church believes that it’s normal and
healthy to be attracted to and to appreciate the
opposite sex. That’s not lust, and it’s not
considered a sin.
 Chastity, the virtue that moderates sexual desire,
is the best remedy for lust. Chastity falls under
temperance and can help to keep physical
pleasure in moderation.
Wrath
 Anger: The sudden outburst of emotion —
namely hostility — and thoughts about the desire
for revenge. You have no control over what
angers you, but you do have control over what
you do after you become angry. Even if someone
does you wrong — robs you, for example — to
avoid the sin of anger, you don’t go after the thief
yourself, you desire for the police to catch the
thief and for a court to sentence her to a fair
punishment.
 Patience, the virtue that allows you to adapt and
endure evil without harboring any destructive
feelings, is the best countermeasure for anger.
Gluttony
 Gluttony: Choosing to over-consume food or
alcohol. Enjoying a delightful dinner isn’t
sinful, but intentionally overeating to the
point where you literally get sick to your
stomach is. So, too, having an alcoholic
beverage now and then (provided that you
don’t suffer from alcoholism) is not sinful in
the eyes of the Church. But drinking to the
point of drunkenness is.
 Periodic fasting, restricting the amount of
food you eat, and abstinence, avoiding meat
or some favorite food, are the best defenses
against gluttony.
Greed
 Greed: The inordinate love of and desire for
earthly possessions. Amassing a fortune and
trying to accumulate the most stuff is greed,
sometimes called avarice. Next to anger,
envy, and lust, more crimes have been
committed due to greed than any other deadly
sin.
 Generosity, is the best weapon against greed.
Freely giving some of your possessions away,
especially to those less fortunate, is
considered the perfect antithesis to greed and
avarice.
Sloth
 Sloth: is laziness — particularly when it concerns
prayer and spiritual life. Sloth is always wanting to rest
and relax, with no desire or intention of making a
sacrifice or doing something for others. It’s an aversion
to work — physical, mental, and spiritual.
 The Church says that the evil habit of being inattentive
at religious worship services and being careless in
fulfilling your religious duties is also a sin of sloth.
 Spiritual laziness can only be overcome by practicing
the virtue of diligence, which is the habit of keeping
focused and paying attention to the work at hand — be
it the work of employment or the work of God.