Chaucer Context

Authorial Context

• Chaucer’s father became rich from inheritance, and so was able to be educated and did not have to follow in his father’s footsteps as a wine merchant.

Courtly love (5)

• The chivalric code of behaviour - A man proves his love by performing deeds or writing poetry. He tells of his suffering for her. She is not supposed to give in to his advances, but show pity for him.

• Love is a kind of sickness over which lovers have no control

• There is no sexual impropriety (Chaucer mocks and satirises this through Damian and May)

• Chaucer translated the most important French courtly love text, The Romance of the Rose, into English

• Chaucer was inspired by Italian love poet, Petrarch

Fabliaux (3)

• A comic short story in verse that includes stock characters

• Sexual and scatological humour

• May - Mal Marie, a young woman who is married to an old man, either an unprincipled sex opportunist, or stupid and gullible.
  Damian.- The young attractive love interest
  January - The Senex Amans, the old sexually feeble man that is cuckolded

The Canterbury Tales (3)

• Allows Chaucer to paint a series of vivid word portraits of a cross-section of his society, from a knight to a Cook.

• Chaucer made his writing more accessible by writing in English. The Court’s official language was still French, the Church’s official language was still Latin

• Inspired by Italian Boccaccio - Also wrote in own vernacular language. Wrote Decameron, a collection of stories told by 10 characters. They originally meet in a church and are ‘gently bred’, as opposed to Chaucer’s all class characters meeting in a pub in Southwark

Merchants (2)

• The rise of the middle class created profit for England, and an appetite for luxury was growing. The merchants capitalised on the demand for luxury goods, and practically ran London when Chaucer was growing up.

• The hierarchical structure where land ownership = wealth and power began to change due to new mercantile class which arose whose wealth was held in moveable goods rather than land.

Sumptuary laws of 1363

These told people what they are allowed to wear according to class, as people of working class were pretending to be aristocrats with their new found wealth.

Epicurean

• Someone who finds enjoyment in all fine aspects of life.

• Januarie is one, but he is considered too hedonistic with his main vice being sex

Hortus Conclusus

• An enclosed garden

• Often seen in love poetry. Reminiscent of garden of eden

The Great Chain Of Being

Strict hierarchical structure of all matter and life, thought to have been decreed by God. Gives everyone a position in society. To defy this system would create chaos in the universe.

Women (6)

• Women were considered a lower class. Men had power and women were supposed to obey

• The Book of Wicked Wives was used to abuse wives. Theophrastus ‘The Golden Book of Marriage’ entailed how a woman should behave in marriage

• Men - mind, reason, power, intellectual and spiritual superiority

• Women - body and the sense, her existence is more of an animal

• Women were forced to use the system to their advantage when possible in the battle to gain control over their own body. Options were to remain a virgin or join a nunnery, but often married off by their families.

• Women were blamed by the church for the fall of man due to Eve causing original sin - treacherous stereotype born of women in this age

Le Miroir De Marriage by Eustache Deschamps

Long satirical poem on the subject of women. Vouloir listens to arguments of 4 of his friends as to why he should marry in his old age. He then goes on to describe his ideal wife. Undeniably influenced Chaucer with his episode with Justinus and Placebo

The Church’s attitudes towards sex

• Church saw sex for pleasure as offensive, even within marriage. Fornication was a great sin and marriage was a holy sacrament.

• St Augustus - ‘the only legitimate cause for sex was reproduction’ ‘passionate love of one’s own wife is adultery’

• Failure to consumate a marriage was ground for annulment, and if a man was impotent this was also grounds for annulment

• The Church’s growing connection to the courts allowed for the punishment of adultery

• Virginity was the highest virtue for women. Once forfeited, the power and cleanness associated with virginity and the Virgin Mary was lost. Comparable to death.

• Marital debt - Either partner in a marriage owes their spouse sex when they want it

Setting

Pavia, the capital of Lombardy, was considered a place to ‘have a good time.’

Peasant’s Revolt 1381

• Chaucer criticises pervasive attitudes to class through characters such as Januarie, a comical, ignorant cuckold