Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!

The Monk

Important parts of the Monks tale.

The Feudal System. In most of medieval European society was dependent on the "feudal" system, which was based on allocation of land in return for service. The king would give out grants of land to his most important noblemen (barons and bishops), and each noble would have to promise to loyally follow him and supply him with soldiers in time of war. They did this at a special - kneeling before the king, he swore an oath with the words "Sire, I become your man." The nobles then divided their land among lower lords, or knights who also had to become their vassals(servants). In the lowest spot in society sat the peasants who worked on the land itself. They had almost no rights, tiny pieces of property - and no vassals. A summary of the life of Geoffery Chaucer. Georfery Chaucer was an English poet, born in London between 1340 and 1345; died there, 25 October, 1400. John Chaucer, a vintner and citizen of London, married Agnes, heiress of one Hamo de Copton, the city moneyer, and owned the house in Upper Thames Street, Dowgate Hill (a site covered now by the arrival platform of Cannon Street Station), where his son Geoffrey was born. That his birth was not in 1328, hitherto the accepted date, is fully proved (Furnivall in The Academy, 8 Dec., 1888, 12 Dec., 1887). John Chaucer was connected with the Court, and once saw Flanders in the royal train. Geoffrey was educated well, but whether he was entered at either university remains unknown. He figures by name from the year 1357, presumably in the capacity of a page, in the household books of the Lady Elizabeth de Burgh, wife of Prince Lionel, third son of King Edward III (Bond in Fornightly Review, VI, 28 Aug., 1873). The lad followed this prince to France, serving through the final and futile Edwardian invasion, which ended in the Peace of Bretigny (1360), and was taken prisoner at "Retters", identified by unwary biographers as Retiers near Rennes, but by Skeat as Rethel near Reims, a place mentioned by Froissart in his account of this very campaign. Thence Chaucer was ransomed by the king, who, when the Lady Elizabeth died, took over her page and later (1367) pensioned him for life. Chaucer was married before 1374; probably the Philippa Chaucer named in the queen's grant of 1366 was then Geoffrey Chaucer's wife (Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, I, 95-7). It seems clear that he could not have been happy in his marriage (Hales in Dict. Nat. Biog., X, 157). He had two sons and a daughter, if not other children. Gascoigne tells us that his contemporary, Thomas Chaucer was the poet's son. This statement, long discredited, is now fully endorsed by the best authorities (Hales in Athenaeum, 31 March, 1888; Skeat, ibid., 27 Jan.1900). Thomas Chaucer's mother was Philippa Roet, daughter of Sir Paon or Payne de Roet Guienne king at arms. Roet had another daughter, Catherine, widow of Sir Hugh Swynford, who was for Gaunt's mistress and eventually his third wife. Thus Chaucer became the brother-in-law of the great duke, who from 1368 onwards had been his most powerful patron. Thomas Chaucer (b. about 1367; d. 1434), later of Woodstock and Ewelme, became chief butler to four sovereign, as well as Speaker of the House of Commons (in 1414). His sister Elizabeth (b.1365) at sixteen entered Barking Abbey as a novice, John of Gaunt providing fifty pounds as her religious dowry. Lewis Chaucer, the "litel sonne Lowys", for whom the "Astrolale" was written, is supposed to have died in childhood. From about his twenty-sixth year Chaucer was frequently employed on important diplomatic missions; the year 1372-3 marks the turning point of his literary life then he was sent to Italy. He was made comptroller of the petty customs of the port of London and complains of the burden of official life in "The House of Fame" (lines 652-60); and it would appear from the prologue the "Legend of Good Women", and through the influence of the new queen, Anne of Bohemia, he was enabled by1385 to sucure a permanent deputy. At this time he gave up housekeeping in Aldgate, and settled in the country, presumably at Greenwich, where he had a garden and arbour. The intrigues of the partisans of the king's uncle, Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, involved Chaucer's fortunes in partial ruin. The grants made to Philippa, his wife ceased in 1387, so that we may suppose she was then dead; during the springs of 1388 Chaucer was obliged to sell two of his pensions; in 1390 he was twice in one day robbed of the king's money, but was excused from repaying it. Until King Richard recovered power Chaucer had lean years to undergo. For a while he was Clerk of the Works at Windsor, Westminster and the Tower, but proved thriftless and unsuccessful in business affairs, and gave little satisfaction. Unrivalled opportunities and the fostering care of successive sovereigns could not keep hirn frorn anxiety, if not penury, towards the end. It is noticeable that his latest and most troubled period produced the "Canterbury Tales". Within four days after his accession King Henry IV, the son of Chaucer's first benefactor, increased Chaucer's remaining income by forty marks per annum. The poet then leased a pleasant house in the monastery garden at Westminster, and there, hard by the Lady Chapel of the Abbey (now replaced by the loftier erection of Henry VII ), he died. For a century and a half his only memorial in Westminster Abbey was a Latin epitaph written by Surigonius of Milan, engraved upon a leaden plate, and hung up, probably at Caxton's instigation, on a pillar near the grave. The present canopied grey marble altar-tomb, on the south side, was set up by Nicholas Brigham, in 1556, all trace of its votive portrait of the venerated master disappeared long ago. The "Canterbury Tales" were first printed by Caxton, from a faulty manuscript, in or about 1476-7; later by Pynson, and by Wynkyn de Worde. Other pieces were collected, and, between 1526-1602, often published with the "Tales". Many of these, attributed to Chaucer even by his earliest great modern editor, Tyrwhitt, are now known not to be his. "The Portraits of Geoffrey Chaucer", London, l900, first issued in the "Chaucer Memorial Lectures", 111-41.) Like Dryden, he was silent, and had a "down look"; this physical characteristic was partly due to a most genuine modesty, partly to the habit of constant reading. Chaucer indeed read and annexed everything, and transmuted everything into that vocabulary of his, all plasticity and all power. He is a cosmopolite, chiefly influenced by Ovid, by his own contemporary Italy, a debtor, if ever man was, to the whole spirit of his age; he has its fire, its impudence, its broad licentiousness; he has rather more than his share of its true-hearted pathos, its exquisite freshness and brightness, its sense of eternity. The so-called "Counsel of Chaucer" sums up, at a holy and serene moment, his philosophic outlook. He had unequalled powers of observation, and gave a highly ironic but most humane report. He is an artist through and through, and that artist had been a soldier and a diplomat, hence his genius, even in its extremes of mirth has balance and health, remoteness and neutrality -- it is never bitter, and never in the least "viewy". Matthew Arnold (Introduction to Ward's "English Poets" 1885, I, pp. xxxiv--v) accuses him of a lack of what Aristotle calls "high and excellent seriousness". But "high seriousness" is not quite the note of the fourteenth century. Chaucer's is the master-note (submerged all over Europe since the Reformation) of joy. This brings us to the question of his personal religion. Foxe (Acts and Monuments of the Church, 1583, II, 839) started the absurd theory that Chaucer was a follower of Wyclif. The poet's own abstract habit; his association with the prince who (probably actuated by no very high motives) withdrew his favour from the contemporary reformer when solicitude for a purer practice ran into heresy and threatened revolt; his close friendship with Strode, a Dominican of Oxford and a strong anti-Lollard--these things tend of themselves to denote Chaucer's views in the matter. The opposite inference is "due to a misconception of his language, based on a misconception of his character" (Lounsbury Studies, II, 469). Like Wyclif, Chaucer loved the priestly ideal; and he draws it incomparably in his "Poor Parson of Town". Yet, as has been said, that very "Parson's Tale", in its extant form, goes far to prove that its author, even by sympathy, was no Wyclifite (A.W. Ward, "Chaucer", London, 1879, p. 134, in "English Men of Letters Series"). Passionless justice was the bed-rock of Chaucer's mind. He paints that parti-coloured Plantagenet world as it was, not interfering to make it better, nor to wish it better. They mean nothing if they do not mean that knowledge by evidence is one thing, assurance by faith another thing; and that lack of sensible proof can never discredit revelation. A somewhat playful confession of belief has here been turned into a serious profession of agnosticism, through sheer lack of spiritual understanding. His “hostility” to the Church", as Professor Lounsbury calls it, is certainly not borne out by Chaucer's going out of his way, as he does, to defend her from age-long calumnies; for instance, in the "Franklin's Tale", and in the section "De Ira" of the "Parson's Tale", he witnesses to her horror of superstitions and false sciences. Chaucer, in short, though none too supernatural a person, had a most orthodox grip on his catechism. The Tale of Melibee and the Monks introduction into the Canterbury tales. Before the Monks Prolouge their was an interuption by the host in which he said; "No more of this for God's dignity!" Yelled our host, "You sir, are making me tired with your vulgar stupidy, may God bless my soul. My ears hurt from all your stupid talking; Those are the words hat the devil would speek." "Those are simply bad jokes in bad taste ",he said. "Why do you think that? Why would you bother me about the story i am telling more than anyone else, I have told the story to the best of my ability!" "God!" cried the host, "Now plainly to the best of my ability, Your dirty story is not worth a turd. You have acomplished nothing else but waste time, your story is over." "Let's see if you can use this country verse, Or tell a tale after me,you might do worse. That has humor and morals good and plain." "Gladly, said the monk i will tell a story about sweet tears and pain. I will relate a little thing in my story That should please you or so I suppose, for sure if nothing else, you're arrogant. It is a moral tale, right and virtuous, though it is told sometimes in different context by different people I will tell it as well." "You know that each evangelist who tells the passion of Lord Jesus Christ does not tell the story exactly, but nonetheless each gospel is true. All of them bacily say no matter what is told different. Some of them say more and some say less when they tell the story of his His passion. I mean now Mark and Matthew, Luke and John without doubt their meaning is all the same. Therefore I ask you if you think I vary in my story, As thus that I do quote you some what more of proverbs than you've ever heard before. Included in this little treatise here, To point the morals out, as they appear, and though I do not quite the same words say That you have heard before I pray. You wont blame me for in the basic sense You will not find a great deal of difference. From the true meaning of that tale. Therefore listen now to what I say, and let me tell you all my tale, I pray." When my tale of Melibee and of Prudence had ended our Host said, "On my faith and by that precious body of Madrian I swear that I would rather than have a barrel of ale before my wife had heard this tale! For she is not that patient and as was this Melibeus' wife Prudence. By God's bones, when I decide to beat you, she will bring me my clubs, and cries, `Slay the dogs every one and break them, both back and every bone!' "And if any of my neighbors will not bow to my wife in church or offend her,when she comes home she shakes her fists in my face and cries, `False coward, avenge your wife! By God's bones, I will have your knife and you will have spinning staff and go spin!' From morning to night she will begin. Alas,' she says, `that if I was created to marry a milksop, or a cowardly ape, That should be browbeaten by every body! You dare not defend your wife's honor!' "This is my life and if you do not fight for my honor I will" , and I will immediately rush out of the door stupidly like a wild lion. I know some day she will make me slay a neighbor, and then i will be on the run. I am dangerous with a knife in hand, I dare not stand up to her. For she is strong and a good fighter by my belif and you will find that when you do or says something that seems amiss to her, change the subject." "My lord, the Monk," he said, "cheer up, you must tell the tale truly, Sir Rochester is near by! "Ride ahead my own lord and do not interrupt our game by the way what is your name." What should I call you my lord Don John, or Don Thomas, or else Don Albon? What monastic order are you from? I vow to God, you have a very handsome complexion; it is a noble pasture where you go to eat.You are not like a another man. On my faith, you are some officer or a worthy sexton. By my judgment you are a master when you are at home. No poor sheltered monk or a novice but a powerful man who is wily and wise. In addition to that your mucles and bones make you a doubly handsome man. I pray that God give ruin to who first brought you into the monastic life! You would have been a women winner if you had as much permission as you have power to perform all your desires you would have gotten very many a creature. However, how do you cope with it?" "God should give me sadness unless I were a pope, not only you, but every mighty man. Though he had a crown quite prominently upon his head he should have a wife or all the world is lost! Religion has taken up all the best men for coupling, and we regular men are shrimps. Our offspring are so feeble that they can not keep children, this makes it that our wives want to try out people in holy orders they can better pay the cost of venus than we can. God knows that you pay with no inferior coins! Do not be angry my lord though I am joking. Very often I have heard the truth said in jest!"This worthy Monk took all this in patience, And said, "I will devote all my efforts, as long as it is conducive to propriety, To tell you a tale and if you desire to listen to me, I will tell you what the life of Saint Edward was like or else first I will tell the tragedies, of which I have a hundreds in my recollection. Tragedy means a true narrative as books can make us remember of someone who stood in great prosperity, who then fell out of high degree into misery, and ends badly. Ordinarily they are in verses of six feet. Many are also composed in prose, and in meters of many and various sorts. This explanation should suffice, now listen if it pleases you to hear it. First I want you to tell these things in chronological order, This story is of popes, emperors, and kings, and according to their times men find these stories written and now I do not recall them for the telling. Excuse me for my ignorance."

My Favorite Web Sites

Angelfire - Free Home Pages
Google.com The Best Research site ever!
Great free html Pics, Backrounds, ect.
The best isp and instant message provider around.