the canterbury tales赏析全.doc

The Canterbury tales Geoffrey Chaucer Contributions Father of English poetry ? Chaucer, for the first time in English literature, presented to us a comprehensive realistic picture of the English society of his time and created a whole gallery of vivid characters from all walks of life in his masterpiece The Canterbury Tales. ? Chaucer develops characterization to a higher artistic level, i.e. characters who are morally and socially typical but exquisitely individual and realistic in detail. ? Chaucer introduced from France the rhymed stanzas of various types to English poetry to replace the Old English alliterative verse. ? Chaucer used for the first time in English the rhymed couplet of iambic pentameter which is to be called later as the heroic couplet . ? Chaucer greatly increased the prestige of English as a literary language and extended the range of its poetic vocabulary and meters. He is considered as a great master of the English language. Chaucer’s contributions to English language ? Chaucer’s language, now called Middle English, is vivid and exact. His verse is smooth. He introduced from France the rhymed stanzas of various types, especially the rhymed couplet of iambic pentameter which was later called the “heroic couplet” to English poetry. Though drawing influence from French, Italian and Latin models, he is the first great poet who wrote in the English language. His production of so much excellent poetry was an important factor in establishing English as the literary language of the country. The spoken English of the time consisted of several dialects, and Chaucer did much in making the dialect of London the standard for the modern English speech. The Canterbury Tales介绍 ? The Canterbury Tales is a book of stories. This is an important book, because it is one of the first to be written in the English language. The book is about a group of travelers who are going from London to Canterbury. As they travel along, each person tells a tale (a story).