CHAPTER 2.

Part 2

General prologue more than a mere introduction. It’s a narrative within a narrative. Story of
how the pilgrims come together and their descriptions. Spring setting when pilgrimaging takes
place. Chaucer creates a persona as narrator.

Chaucer’s will was change.

The feudal system was collapsing at Chaucer’s times. Peasants had to pay high taxes and
therefore they demanded higher payments. Nevertheless, they were not listened so made a
revolt.

He doesn’t criticize directly to the pilgrims = satire. He is too naïve.

Profane love  is shown in the jewelry the prioress is wearing. And her name is madame,
which is more suitable for nobility. Also, the food she eats, the bread, that should be given to
the poor.

We’re expected to find something different. We have different expectations as Chaucer does
form those people.

The pilgrims have different priorities. And the pilgriming is a necessity to go out.

General prologue: spring setting and the pilgrims descriptions.

The knight (embodiment of virtue, honor, chivalry values and physical description, but he is
described as being old fashioned) and squire( his interests are singing, playing the flute,
jousting, first define as a lover instead of a knight, a sleepless lover like the nightingale) are
father and son. The nun is more worthily than she should be.

CHAPTER 3

The Renaissance

the monarchies started being important.

The poem: the lady ignores the knight. It’s a masochistic feeling which the knight suffers.
Nature seems artificial because it’s vey symmetrical. She is seen like an angel who crowns the
knight. Cupid if flying around them, and the knight has an arrow from Cupid.

Shakespeare didn’t create the English sonnet but he someway made it famous.

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Petrarchan sonnet  idealized woman

Shakespearean sonnet  real woman. He thought that the Petrarchan sonnets showed a fake
and exaggerated beauty.

He was a playwright and also an actor.

 Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella  lover and star

 Lady Mary Wroth’s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus ” Amphilanthus” = womanizer
 My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun Sonnet 130  antilove sonnet. Its exactly the
contrary of Petrarchan sonnets. He broke with conventional beauty ladies. “my mistress
reeks”; “But no such roses see I in her cheeks,”; “she walks treads on the ground”; “I think
my love as rare”; two last lines summary of the rest of the poem = “13 And yet by heav'n I
think my love as rare / 14 As any she belied with false compare.” Saying that his love is real
and complet for her = ANTIPETRACHAN POEM. Shakespeare writes a parody of Petrarchan
sonnets to mock of the false and empty language of the stereotypes and cliches of the
epoch.

He emphasizes that people fall in love of other people that have defects but that that is
what real love is about.

 Edmund Spenser, Epithalamion  artificial description of a woman and empty

language. It describes a woman by parts.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Sonnet 18  “thee” means “a ti / a vosotros”. Line 1
= rhetorical question. “But thy eternal summer shall not fade” metaphor : his beauty will stay.
Compares to the lady to the summer. Last lines “13 So long as men can breathe or eyes can
see, / 14 So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” = we read the poem which revives the
poem and the person Shakespeare is describing, so it’s immortal, both the poem and the
woman. It’s a self-love poem bc he says more about the poem and himself than the lover =
“shall I compare”.
His poetry continues to live while people reads it. They are immortal. It’s a poem about time as
a destroyer. Poetry as a way of continuing alive. He sounds determined in line 9, and in line 11.
Showed in “shall”. He sounds like a God. He writes to preserve life and sounds arrogant.

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Eighteenth century

The theaters were reopened by Charles II when he was restored. He allowed women to
participate in theaters, but puritans were totally against. Charles II had illegitimate children.
He never got married.

Puritans thought that the plague and the fire were punishments of God.

John Milton was a puritan, so he was on the contrary side when the monarchy was restored,
and the reason why he was imprisoned. He studied Latin, Greek, and a lot more of languages...
he was ambitious and wanted to write something very great.

PARADISE LOST (long poem of 10 books at first, now 12)

The fall of man refers to the biblical allusion to Adan and Eve disobedience in the garden of
Eden. It is an epic poem.

The Garden of Eden is the historical place, and God as a supernatural being. The poem starts
with the angels expelled from heaven  medias res. Formal speeches of God, Satan…