Geoffrey Robertson

Geoffrey Chaucer’s famous Middle English poem, Troilus and Criseyde, relays a calamitous love story set during the Trojan War. Nearly a century later, Robert Henryson, ‘Scottish Chaucerian’, authored his own poetic continuation of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde entitled, The Testament of Cresseid. Although the two highly expressive pieces of poetry are inclusive of and are remarking on consistent characters, Chaucer and Henryson could not have composed two more vastly contrasting representations…

Those of Importance (An Addition to Canterbury Tales) Around the year 1300, Chaucer wrote “The Canterbury Tales”. In this story, he begins to describe the people that he takes on his adventure to Canterbury. As he begins to describe each person who embarks on this journey alongside him, he tells of who they are and the kind of affect they might have on other people. After he tells of who these people are, he then makes the effort to tell of personal stories from each of the characters. Through…

The “Father of English Literature” Geoffrey Chaucer, born in London around 1343, was the first poet to be buried in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey and largely influenced literature since he was the first to introduce English in his work while other court poetry was still written in Latin or French. Geoffrey Chaucer was the son of John Chaucer, a London wine merchant, who grew up in an able and wealthy family. He began to write poetry in the 1360s, when England had a peace treaty with…

Intended Audience) “A father has to be a provider, a teacher, a role model, but most importantly, a distant authority figure who can never be pleased. Otherwise, how will children ever understand the concept of God?” As Stephen Colbert says, so Geoffrey Chaucer attempts to relay; how does one ever begin to understand so abstract a concept as holiness? Chaucer begins by trying to reach a certain group of people: the common people of England. In this way, Chaucer tries to use the languages of…

French medieval historian Philippe Aries’ chapter “The Discovery of Childhood” from his novel Centuries of Childhood addresses his theory of a constructed childhood, which took place from the thirteenth century up until the seventeenth century. During this time, he claims that our modern affinity for the innocence and beauty of childhood developed. Aries particularly wrote this piece in part for his fellow medieval historians as well as art historians already familiar with the many pieces he…

The Canterbury tales clearly illustrates that the institutional church was still a very prominent and established symbol of importance in England around the 1400’s. However, a more prominent theme in the Canterbury Tales is that the Church was in a corrupt state. The Institutional church is well represented in the Canterbury tales. The book, in its entirety, is based around religion because the book is a tale of 29 pilgrims, and the stories they tell to entertain one another on their journey to…

Throughout history stories have been one if the fundamental basis of all cultures no matter if they have been passed down orally from generation to generation or through written in script. There are several stories and poems in The Norton Anthology of English Literature that are considered to be some of the best literature of all time, such as Beowulf, Everyman, and The Canterbury Tales. Within these literature works people can see several differences and similarities as the literature moves…

In The Canterbury Tales, the narrator introduces the audience to a handful of pilgrims going on a pilgrimage. The pilgrims are introduced and they meet the Host of the hotel. The Host creates a story telling game and explains the rules. He wants two stories on the way there and two on the way back home from each pilgrim. Furthermore, the stories are judged based on their moral education and entertainment value. Comparing “The Knight’s Tale” and “The Pardoner’s Tale” considering the rules, “The…

Elton John and the Franklin “Every age is a Canterbury pilgrimage; we all pass on, each sustaining one or other of these characters” (Blake), said William Blake, celebrated 18th century English poet. In reference to the father of English literature, Geoffrey Chaucer’s most celebrated writing, The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer develops a mental model about all of the characters in the literature and describes each character in detail. Three centuries later, Blake’s statement still stands true.…

Albert Camus contributed to a kind of writing consisting of Absurdism. In the book, The stranger, he used characters to demonstrate the absurdness in multiple ways. Albert Camus demonstrated how people who live by the rules of Christianity feel threatened by Meursault, the main character, because he doesn’t conform, in other words, he’s awkward. Meursault excludes himself from emotion in multiple events in the book, while most of the people noticed that he had minimal to no emotion at all.…