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It pretends to give the experiences of the author, an English knight, on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, starting from St. Albans in Hertfordshire in 1322. It pretends to be a guide for other pilgrims, and hence has somewhat of a religious flavor; but its best claim to distinction now is as the first English prose work of which the aim is entertainment. Its effect comes chiefly from a trick used afterward with great success by Defoe and Swift, the use of exact figures and of numerous circumstantial details in connection with the wonders described.

In a certain lake, for example, grow reeds thirty fathoms long; and others apparently longer, at the roots of which are found precious stones of great virtues. A further evidence of his truthfulness is the occasional admission that he speaks from hearsay; as when we read: "In the Isle of Lango is yet the daughter of Hippocras, in form and likeness of a great dragon, that is a hundred fathoms in length, as men say; for I have not seen her." Or: "Of Paradise I cannot speak properly, for I was not there."

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MANDEVILLE.

From a drawing in a MS. in the British Museum.

That the work was immensely popular is shown by the existence to-day of some 300 manuscripts of it. Its setting forth what was accepted as fact by the best thinkers of Mandeville's time makes it worthy of attention to-day. Notable examples of this are his account of the cotton plant and his belief in the roundness of the earth. (It must be

remembered that he wrote a century before Columbus sailed westward for India.) The Travels is, moreover, written in an almost uniformly easy, smooth style: open the volume quite at random, and one will assuredly find interesting matter.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER, 1340-1400

66

There remains to be treated in this period one writer whose fame rests on a far solider basis than any yet mentioned. No concession need be made on historical or other grounds to place Chaucer high, not only among medieval poets, not only among English poets, but among poets of all times and lands. Even Matthew Arnold, who denies Chaucer a position among the great classics," admits that his poetry shows a "large, free, simple, clear yet kindly view of human life"; that he is "a genuine source of joy and strength"; and that he has " the power to survey the world from a central, a truly human point of view." If these admissions are justified, the denial of "classic" standing to the poet must be due to a very restricted use of the term.

CHAUCER.

From the Ellesmere MS. (British Museum.)

1

We have, along with much uncertainty, more information regarding Chaucer's life than regarding any writer previously considered. For these additional facts we are indebted not at all to great appreciation in his day of his literary efforts,

1 "The Study of Poetry," in Essays in Criticism, Second Series.

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tured. This fact becomes quite plain when one compares Chaucer's work with Wiclif's or with Piers Plowman.

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Under Italian Influence. With the exception of The Death of Blanche no work of Chaucer written prior to his

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THE OLD TABARD INN, SOUTHWARK.

thirtieth year calls for mention here. Before his next important work appeared he had visited various cities of Italy 1

1 It should, perhaps, be remarked that the Life of St. Cecilia, assigned to the Second Nun in the Canterbury collection, was probably written about the time of the first Italian journey. The Knight's Tale also may be a revision of an earlier work of the poet.

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on government business, and had come under the influence of the great Italian writers, Boccaccio and Petrarch; and that of Dante, who had been dead fifty years and who was already a literary saint.

To this "period of Italian influence" belong The Parlement of Foules (Assembly of Birds), celebrating the betrothal of King Richard II in 1382; The House of Fame, an unfinished dream poem, the meaning of which is still in dispute; Troilus and Criseyde, a very free adaptation of Boccaccio's version of the Trojan hero's love story; and the Legend of Good Women, an apology (real or pretended) for earlier unfavorable presentations of women.

While he

"The Canterbury Tales "; (1) The Form. was writing the Legend, Chaucer was probably planning his greatest work, The Canterbury Tales, of which the Prologue and most of the tales may be dated between his forty-fifth and fiftieth years. For a number of tales sources have been found; for yet another number, close parallels; for the collection as a whole no model has been suggested offering resemblances enough to be worth discussing. The idea of setting a number of stories in a "frame" is very old; but Chaucer's pilgrimage is distinctly a frame of his own making, the material of which he obtained from personal experience.

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(2) The Plan. The plan of the Canterbury Tales, which should be read by all in Chaucer's own words, Prologue, lines 1-42, 715-858, is as follows:

The poet stopping one April evening at the Tabard Inn in Southwark (south side of the Thames, just across the bridge from Thames Street) finds a party of twenty-nine "sundry folk" gathered, ready to start next day on a pilgrimage to Canterbury especially to the tomb of Thomas à Becket the martyr. He becomes one "of their fellowship" immediately,

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