... ign ords, in this case French and Latin ones. Thus, the various dialects of Middle English spoken in the 14th century ere similar to Modern English and can be read ithout great difficulty today.The Middle English literature of the 14th and 15th centuries is much more diversified than the previous Old English literature. A variety of French and even Italian elements influenced Middle English literature, especially in southern England. In addition, different regional styles ere maintained, for literature and learning had not yet been centralized. For these reasons, as ell as because of the vigorous and uneven groth of national life, the Middle English period contains a ealth of literary monuments not easily classified.Allegory In the north and est, poems continued to be ritten in forms very like the Old English alliterative, four-stress lines. Of these poems, The Vision of illiam Concerning Piers the Ploman, better knon as Piers Ploman, is the most significant. No thought to be by illiam Langland, it is a long, impassioned ork in the form of dream visions a favorite literary device of the day, protesting the plight of the poor, the avarice of the poerful, and the sinfulness of all people. The emphasis, hoever, is placed on a Christian vision of the life of activity, of the life of unity ith God, and of the synthesis of these to under the rule of a purified church. As such, despite various faults, it bears comparison ith the other great Christian visionary poem, La divina commedia The Divine Comedy, by Dante. For both, the atchords are heavenly love and love operative in this orld.A second and shorter alliterative vision poem, The Pearl, ritten in northest England about 1370, is similarly doctrinal, but its tone is ecstatic, and it is far more deliberately artistic. Apparently an elegy for the death of a small girl although idely varying religious allegorical interpretations have been suggested for it, the poem describes the exalted state of childlike innocence in heaven and the need for all souls to become as children to enter the pearly gates of the Ne Jerusalem. The ork ends ith an impressive vision of heaven, from hich the dreamer aakes. In general, poetry and prose expressing a mystical longing for, and union ith, the deity is a common feature of the late Middle Ages, particularly in northern England.Tales of Chivalry and AdventureA third alliterative poem, supposedly by the same anonymous author ho rote The Pearl, is Sir Gaain and the Green Knight late 1300s, a romance, or tale, of knightly adventure and love, of the general medieval type introduced by the French. Most English romances ere dran, as this one apparently as, from French sources. Most of these sources are concerned ith the knights of King Arthur and seem to go back in turn to Celtic tales of great antiquity. In Sir Gaain, against a background of chivalric gallantry, the tale is told of the knights resistance to the blandishments of another mans beautiful ife.Chaucer To other important, no alliterative verse romances form part of the ork of Geoffrey Chaucer. These are the psychologically penetrating Troilus and Criseyde 1385, a tale of the fatal course of a noble love, laid in Homeric Troy and based on Il filostrato, a romance by the 14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio and The Knights Tale 1382 later included in Chaucers Canterbury Tales, also based on Boccaccio. Immersed in court life and charged ith various governmental duties that carried him as far as Italy, Chaucer yet found time to translate French and Latin orks, to rite under French influence several secular vision poems of a semi allegorical nature The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fols, and, above all, to compose The Canterbury Tales probably after 1387. This latter ork consists of 24 stories or parts of stories mostly in verse in almost all the medieval genres recounted by ... Download