A Smaller History of English Literature Author:James Rowley Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3CHAPTER IV. GEOFFREY CHAUCER. The fourteenth century is the most important epoch in the intellectual history of Europe. It is the point of contact between two widely-differing eras i... more »n the social, religious, and political annals of our race; the slack water between the ebb of Feudalism and Chivalry, and the " young flood " of the Revival of Letters and the great Protestant Reformation. Of this great transformation from the old order to the new, the personal career, no less than the works, of the first great English poet, Chaucer, will furnish us with the most exact type and expression ; for, like all men of the highest order of genius, he at once followed and directed the intellectual tendencies of his age, and is himself the " abstract and brief chronicle" of the spirit of his time. And in the age in which he lived he was eminently happy; the magnificent court of Edward III. had carried the splendour of chivalry to the height of its development; the victories of Sluys, of Cre'cy, and Poitiers, by exciting the national pride, tended to consummate the fusion into one vigorous nationality of the two elements which formed the English people and the English language. The literature, too, abundant in quantity, if not remarkable for much originality of form, was rapidly taking a purely English tone; the rhyming chronicles and legendary romances were either translated into, or originally composed in, the vernacular language. In endeavouring to form an idea of the intellectual situation of England in the fourteenth century, we must by no means leave out of account the vast influence exerted by the preaching of Wiclif, and the mortal blow struck by him against the foundations of Catholic supremacy in England. This, together with the general hostility excited by the intolerable corruptions of the monastic ord...« less