GENRE SPECIFICITY OF THE CANTERBURY TALES

ELEMENTS OF STORYTELLING IN THE CANTERBURY TALES

J. Chaucer's “Canterbury Tales” brought him worldwide fame. The idea for stories was given to Chaucer by reading Boccaccio's Decameron.

Modern poetry begins with Gerry Chaucer (1340 - 1400), diplomat, soldier, scientist. He was a bourgeois who knew the court, had an inquisitive eye, read widely and traveled to France and Italy to study classical works in Latin. He wrote because he was aware of his genius, but his readership was small: courtiers, and some workers and merchants. He served in the London Customs House. This post gave him the opportunity to become more familiar with the business life of the capital, and to see with his own eyes the social types that would appear in his main book, The Canterbury Tales.

The Canterbury Tales came out from his pen in 1387. They grew up on the basis of a narrative tradition, the origins of which are lost in ancient times, which made itself known in the literature of the 13th-14th centuries. in Italian short stories, cycles of satirical tales, “Roman Deeds” and other collections of instructive stories. In the XIV century. The plots, selected from different authors and from different sources, are combined in a deeply individual design. The chosen form - stories of traveling pilgrims - makes it possible to present a vivid picture of the Middle Ages. Chaucer's idea of ​​the world includes Christian miracles, which are narrated in the "Abbess's Tale" and in "The Lawyer's Tale", and the fantasy of Breton lays, which manifests itself in the "Weaver's Tale of Bath", and the idea of ​​​​Christian long-suffering - in "Ras - the tale of an Oxford student." All these ideas were organic to the medieval consciousness. Chaucer does not question their value, as evidenced by the inclusion of similar motifs in The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer creates role images. They are created on the basis of professional class characteristics and the inconsistency of the heroes with it. Typification is achieved through duplication and multiplication of similar images. Absolon from The Miller's Tale, for example, plays the role of a minister of religion - a lover. He is a church clerk, a semi-spiritual person, but his thoughts are directed “not to God, but to the pretty parishioners. The prevalence of this image in literature is evidenced, in addition to numerous French fabliaux, by one of the folk ballads included in the collection “Secular lyrics of the XlVth and XVth centuries”. The behavior of the hero of this short poem is very similar to the actions of Absolon. The repetition of the image makes it typical.

All literary scholars who have studied the problem of the genres of The Canterbury Tales agree that one of the main literary genres of this work is the short story.

“A short story (Italian novella, lit. - news), - we read in the literary encyclopedic dictionary, - a small prose genre comparable in volume to a story, but differing from it in its sharp centripetal plot, often paradoxical, lack of descriptiveness and compositional rigor . By poeticizing the incident, the short story extremely exposes the core of the plot - the center, the peripeteia, and brings life material into the focus of one event."

In contrast to the short story - a genre of new literature at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, which highlights the visual and verbal texture of the narrative and gravitates towards detailed characteristics - the short story is the art of plot in its purest form, which developed in ancient times in close connection with ritual magic and myths, addressed primarily to the active, rather than contemplative, side of human existence. The novelistic plot, built on sharp antitheses and metamorphoses, on the sudden transformation of one situation into its exact opposite, is common in many folklore genres (fairy tale, fable, medieval anecdote, fabliau, schwank).

“The literary novel appears in the Renaissance in Italy (the brightest example is “The Decameron” by G. Boccaccio), then in England, France, Spain (G. Chaucer, Margaret of Navarre, M. Cervantes). In the form of a comic and edifying short story, the formation of Renaissance realism takes place, revealing the spontaneously free self-determination of the individual in a world fraught with vicissitudes. Subsequently, the short story in its evolution builds on related genres (short story, novella, etc.), depicting extraordinary, sometimes paradoxical and supernatural incidents, breaks in the chain of socio-historical and psychological determinism.”

Chaucer as a poet, even before creating The Canterbury Tales, was influenced by French and Italian literature. As is known, some pre-Renaissance features already appear in Chaucer’s work, and it is usually attributed to the Proto-Renaissance. The influence of the classic Renaissance novella's creator, Giovanni Boccaccio, on Chaucer is controversial. Only his acquaintance with the early works of Boccaccio and the use as sources of Boccaccio’s “Filocolo” (in Franklin’s story), “History of Famous Men and Women” (in the monk’s story), “Theseid” (in the knight’s story) and only one of short stories “The Decameron”, namely the story of the faithful wife Griselda, according to the Latin translation of Petrarch (in the student’s story). True, some overlap with the motives and plots developed by Boccaccio in The Decameron can also be found in the stories of the skipper, merchant and Franklin. Of course, this overlap can be explained by an appeal to the general short story tradition. Among other sources of the “Canterbury Tales” are “The Golden Legend” by Jacob Voraginsky, fables (in particular, Mary of France) and “The Romance of the Fox”, “The Romance of the Rose”, knightly novels of the Arthurian cycle, French fabliaux, and other works medieval, partly ancient literature (for example, Ovid). Meletinsky also says that: “Legendary sources and motives are found in the stories of the second nun (taken from the “Golden Legend” life of St. Cecilia), the lawyer (going back to the Anglo-Norman chronicle of Nicola Trivet, the story of the vicissitudes and sufferings of the virtuous Christian Constanza - the daughter of the Roman Emperor) and a doctor (the story of chaste Virginia, a victim of lust and the villainy of Judge Claudius, goes back to Titus Livius and the Romance of the Rose). In the second of these stories, legendary motifs are intertwined with fabulous ones, partly in the spirit of a Greek novel, and in the third - with the legend of Roman “valor”. The flavor of legend and a fairy-tale basis are felt in the student’s story about Griselda, although the plot is taken from Boccaccio.”

Representatives from various walks of life went on the pilgrimage. According to their social status, pilgrims can be divided into certain groups:

High society (Knight, Squire, church ministers);

Scientists (Doctor, Lawyer);

Landowners (Franklin);

Owners (Melnik, Majordomo);

Merchant class (Skipper, Merchant);

Craftsmen (Dyer, Carpenter, Weaver, and so on);

Lower class (Plowman).

In the General Prologue, Geoffrey Chaucer introduces virtually each pilgrim to the reader (by simply mentioning his presence, or presenting in detail his character). The "General Prologue" in some way forms the reader's expectations - the expectation of the main mood and theme of the story, the subsequent behavior of the pilgrim. It is from the “General Prologue” that the reader gets an idea of ​​what stories will be told, as well as the essence, the inner world of each pilgrim. The behavior of the characters presented by Chaucer reveals the essence of their personalities, their habits, personal lives, moods, good and bad sides. The character of a particular character is presented in the prologue to The Canterbury Tales and is further revealed in the story itself, prefaces and afterwords to the stories. “Based on Chaucer’s attitude towards each character, the pilgrims participating in the journey can be organized into certain groups:

Ideal images (Knight, Squire, Student, Plowman, Priest);

“Neutral” images, descriptions of which are not presented in the “Prologue” - Chaucer only mentions their presence (clergymen from the Abbess’s entourage);

Images with some negative character traits (Skipper, Economy);

Inveterate Sinners (Carmelite, Indulgence Seller, Bailiff of the Church Court - all of them are church employees)."

Chaucer finds an individual approach to each character, presenting him in the “General Prologue”.

“In the poetic Canterbury Tales, the national compositional frame was the setting of the scene: a tavern on the road leading to Canterbury, a crowd of pilgrims, in which essentially the entire English society is represented - from feudal lords to a cheerful crowd of artisans and peasants. In total, 29 people are recruited into the company of pilgrims. Almost each of them is a living and quite complex image of a person of his time; Chaucer masterfully describes in excellent verse the habits and clothing, demeanor, and speech characteristics of the characters.”

Just as the heroes are different, so are Chaucer’s artistic means. He speaks of the pious and brave knight with friendly irony, because the knight with his courtliness looks too anachronistic in the rude, noisy crowd of common people. The author speaks with tenderness about the knight's son, a boy full of enthusiasm; about the thieving majordomo, the miser and the deceiver - with disgust; with mockery - about brave merchants and artisans; with respect - about a peasant and a righteous priest, about an Oxford student in love with books. Chaucer speaks of the peasant uprising with condemnation, almost even with horror.

The brilliant genre of literary portraiture is perhaps Chaucer's main creation. Here, as an example, is a portrait of a weaver from Bath.

And the Bath weaver was chatting with him, not counting the crowd of girls’ friends.

What has changed in six and a half centuries? Unless the horse gave way to a limousine.

But gentle humor gives way to harsh satire when the author describes the seller of indulgences he hates.

His eyes sparkled like a hare's. He himself bleated about this like a sheep...

Throughout the work, the pilgrims tell various stories. Knight - an old courtly plot in the spirit of a chivalric romance; carpenter - a funny and obscene story in the spirit of humble urban folklore, etc. Each story reveals the interests and sympathies of a particular pilgrim, thereby achieving the individualization of the character and solving the problem of portraying him from the inside.

Chaucer is called the "father of realism." The reason for this is his art of literary portraiture, which, it turns out, appeared in Europe earlier than pictorial portraiture. And indeed, reading “The Canterbury Tales”, one can safely talk about realism as a creative method, implying not only a truthful generalized image of a person, typifying a certain social phenomenon, but also a reflection of changes occurring in society and man.

So, English society in Chaucer’s portrait gallery is a society in motion, in development, a society in transition, where feudal orders are strong but outdated, where a new man of a developing city is revealed. From The Canterbury Tales it is clear: the future does not belong to preachers of the Christian ideal, but to business people, full of strength and passions, although they are less respectable and virtuous than the same peasant and rural priest.

The Canterbury Tales lays the foundation for new English poetry, drawing on the entire experience of advanced European poetry and national song traditions.

Based on the analysis of this work, we came to the conclusion that the genre nature of The Canterbury Tales was strongly influenced by the short story genre. This is manifested in the features of the plot, the construction of images, the speech characteristics of the characters, humor and edification.

Chaucer, apparently, took up this main work in earnest no earlier than 1386. But we know that its individual pieces were written long before that: “St. Cecilia” (the story of the second nun), fragments of the monk’s story, “Lalamon and Archytas” (a knight's story), "Melibaeus" (Chaucer's second story), a priest's story. When these things were written, Chaucer hardly had a plan for The Canterbury Tales. It appeared later, and suitable material, previously prepared, was drawn into the emerging frame in the most natural way. The most significant part of the Canterbury Tales appeared in the four years 1386-1389. The final text contains 20 complete things, two unfinished and two broken. Here, as we will see, not everything that was planned. But the social meaning of the work, its artistic value and influence on the further growth of English literature were fully felt. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer depicts the society of New England. There is a place for the knight in this society, just as there is a place for him in the motley company of the Canterbury pilgrims. But both here and there they are already being squeezed out, and the most lively and flexible part of the feudal class begins, under the pressure of circumstances, to move onto the path of bourgeois management. And soon - this has already begun with the accession of Chaucer's benefactor Bolingbroke - the feudal lords will begin to exterminate each other: the War of the Roses is approaching. The knights will be replaced by others. These others are the middle classes. Chaucer paints them with particular passion. Many of the Canterbury pilgrims are merchants and artisans of good means or representatives of liberal professions. They wear clothes made of good cloth, they have nice horses, and their wallets have enough to pay for their quarters. Even his peasant (prologue) is not a poor man: he regularly pays his tithes and fulfills his duties, without complaining about his fate. He is not at all like Langland's hungry cotters or the peasant depicted with such stunning strength in the Creed of Peter the Plowman. Chaucer willingly goes into the details of merchant and craft (the miller's story) life. He does not hide the funny sides of the townspeople (the woman from Bath), but nowhere is his humor so imbued with gentle affection as in these cases. His attitude towards the upper classes is not hostile. Only subtle mockery, visible, for example, in the parody story about Sir Topaz, shows that the author has outgrown the knightly ideology. Much more obvious is ridicule of clergy. There are several of them in the company, and all of them are caricatures (with the exception of the priest), especially the monks: perhaps echoes of Wycliffe’s sermon were felt here. Chaucer knows perfectly well that the church must feed the army of its parasites at the expense of the sons of the people, because otherwise it cannot exist, and he knows how to show this (the story of the seller of indulgences). He considers only the parish priest necessary. The rest are no longer needed.

27) English literature of the 15th century: general characteristics.

The fifteenth century in the history of England usually appears to us as a time of decline and decay. In all areas of life and culture of this historical period, the observer's gaze reveals, first of all, the features of decay and weakening of creative activity. At first glance, the literature of this period does not put forward a single major name; The place of former poetic luminaries is taken by compilers, imitators, translators, who live entirely on the heritage of past times. Continuous wars and civil strife were not conducive to the development of peaceful creative work. The 14th century ended with the deposition of King Richard II (1399). In the person of Henry IV, the Lancaster dynasty came to the English throne. Henry's reign was troubled and full of failures. The arbitrariness of the feudal lords, the constant strife between them, the heavy taxes that fell on the shoulders of the working population, the beginning of the fanatical persecution of “heretics” - all this soon embittered the population, and at the beginning of the reign of Henry V (1413-1422) led to massive popular unrest . Henry V tried to divert attention from internal troubles with widely planned military campaigns against the French, thus renewing the Hundred Years' War with France, which had somewhat died down under Richard II and Henry IV. Outwardly, these were successful and for a long time afterwards they pleased the English national pride. The Battle of Agincourt (1415), when Henry, who landed on the French coast with his small troops and defeated a large French army, never lost its attractive force for English poets, playwrights and novelists; She was also glorified by Shakespeare. Henry V's further successes seemed even more dazzling; the capture of the entire north of France, the capture of Paris (1422) was the limit of the hopes that his contemporaries pinned on him. But Henry V died unexpectedly, at the height of his military glory. His young son (Henry VI, 1422-1461) received the crown. Immediately, feuds among the feudal lords began, the struggle of court parties for influence and power; The French possessions of England began to quickly decline; after a period of brilliant victories, a time of bitter defeats began. By 1450 the English retained only one place on the continent, Calais. However, before the Hundred Years' War with France ended, new, this time internecine wars arose in England, plunging the country into a state of complete lawlessness. The War of the Roses (1455-1485) was the last mortal struggle of the rebellious feudal forces. It was a struggle for the crown and, at the same time, for the creation of a new absolute monarchical regime. On the battlefields between supporters of York and Lancaster, along with the death of almost all the old feudal nobility, the old feudal culture bled and died. The Battle of Bosworth (1485), when Henry Tudor defeated his rival Richard III, began a new era in English history. The young Tudor dynasty relied on new social forces. The new nobility, which seized the hereditary land holdings of the old feudal families, destroyed during the period of internecine wars, was directly dependent on the royal power and supported its desire for further national-state unification of the country. Throughout the 15th century, the influence of the gentry, merchants, and cities was constantly growing, noticeable already in the 14th century; Industry and trade are expanding, and the spirit of entrepreneurship is growing. Throughout this period, literacy undoubtedly increased in wider circles of the population than before. Along with the growing needs of the strengthened middle class, the network of schools in London and the provinces increased, ranging from schools established by the king (at Eton and Cambridge), and schools run by churches or guilds, down to small private institutions in which children were given their first lessons in literacy. It is characteristic that the largest number of schools belonged to the category of primary schools, where students did not receive a scientific education, but only prepared for purely practical, most often merchant, activities. The development of school education increased the demand for books and increased the production of manuscripts as the then form of publishing activity. From one official document dating back to 1422, we can conclude that in that year, out of 112 London guilds, four guilds were specifically engaged in copying manuscript books for sale. By the middle and especially by the end of the 15th century, we have a number of information about libraries of such handwritten books that appeared not only among land magnates or representatives of the church, but also among nobles and wealthy townspeople. One of the most famous documents of this kind is the inventory of the private library of John Paston, a landowner, made shortly after 1475. Other arts - painting, sculpture, architecture - were also not in decline in England in the 15th century; on the contrary, they received new and stronger foundations for of its development. English painting and sculpture of this time, for example, experienced the beneficial influences of the Italian and Burgundian schools and created a number of wonderful works designed not only for church use. Architecture was experiencing one of its heydays and was also gradually becoming secularized; Along with the magnificent buildings of churches and monasteries, wonderful secular buildings were also erected in England - university colleges, houses of wealthy citizens (Crosby Hall in London, 1470), buildings for guild associations (London Guildhall, 1411-1425). Commercial connections attracted a much larger number of foreigners to London and English port cities than before. The largest number of Englishmen who showed in the first half of the 15th century. a penchant for studying classical antiquity and a commitment to new science belonged to the highest clerical nobility. Against this background, the figure of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, brother of Henry V, who was the first humanist philanthropist and patron of humanistic interests among English scientists and writers of his time, stands out sharply. Humphrey was a great lover of antiquity and an ardent admirer of Italian learning. He ordered teachers from Italy to study ancient authors, spent huge amounts of money on purchasing manuscripts, corresponded with a number of humanists, and ordered them translations of Greek authors. The most important result of Humphrey's activities was the accumulation of remarkable book treasures, which the first English humanists were able to take advantage of half a century later. Humphrey's library was bequeathed to Oxford University. Next to Humphrey, one can name another representative of the English aristocracy of the 15th century, who gained significant fame in Italy itself for his exemplary Latin oratory. This was John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester. Beginning in the 1450s, the number of young Englishmen who were drawn to Italy by a thirst for knowledge increased. Changes in the field of language were of great importance for everything under consideration and for subsequent periods. Compared to the 14th century. in England at this time the prevalence of French speech undoubtedly decreased, even in the circles of the highest nobility. Throughout the century, the London dialect grew in importance. Under its influence, dialectal differences in the written language of other English regions were obscured. The completion of the centralization of political power by the end of the Wars of the Scarlet and White Roses also contributed to centralization in the field of language, the development of a general English literary speech based on the London dialect. The emergence of printing in England was of great importance in this regard. The opening of the first printing press in England was the work of William Caxton (1421-1491). ), publisher and translator. As a young man, Caxton entered as an apprentice to the wealthy London merchant Robert Large, who was sheriff and later lord mayor of the capital. After Large's death, Caxton lived for about 30 years in Bruges; one of the most important trading centers of the then northwestern Europe. There he achieved considerable position and honor, being a kind of consul, "governing the English living abroad." Many writers, translators, calligraphers, miniaturists and bookbinders lived in Bruges; Literature and poetry bloomed here, however, in the late autumn color of medieval culture, already doomed to destruction; medieval chivalric romances and courtly lyrics were still in great use here. All this could not but have an impact on Caxton; Around 1464, he began to translate a collection of stories about Troy from French. Caxton subsequently published this translation in the same Bruges (The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, 1474). It was the first printed book in English, although it was published outside of England. In 1474-1475 Caxton entered into company with the miniature painter and calligrapher Mansion and began printing books. In addition to the “Collected Stories of Troy,” Caxton, together with Mansion, published in Bruges a book about the game of chess (The Game And Playe of the Chesse) and one book in French.

Between the opening of the Westminster printing house and the end of the 15th century (before 1500), about 400 books were printed in England. English literature of the 15th century was of a transitional nature - from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The old traditions are still very strong in it; it still gravitates towards the old forms, but gradually these forms are filled with new content, which modifies and breaks them. Epic tends toward the novel and chronicle; prose takes the place of poetry. The attraction to prose is reinforced by the widely developed translation activity. In the 15th century in England they translate Latin treatises, French novels, and a wide variety of works that have applications to life. Literature receives a specifically practical purpose, which it did not have before, and begins to serve the numerous needs of the population on a much wider scale. Catalogs of English manuscripts of the 15th century are replete with treatises on hunting and fishing, military art and fortification, growing orchards, agriculture and home improvement. Medicine and education, cookbooks and rules of etiquette are found here more often than theological works or works of fiction in the proper sense of the word. Books related to trading activities are especially numerous: commercial directories and guides for traveling merchants, works of a geographical or economic nature. In the first half of the 15th century. all such works, including educational books, are written primarily in poetry; In the second half of the century, poetry is replaced by prose, the technique of which is already acquiring some stability, developing general literary and grammatical norms. A typical example of a poetic work of purely practical purpose is the very curious “Little Book of English Politics” (Lybelle of Englishe Polycye, 1486), written by an unknown person for the purpose of instructing the English merchants. She puts forward a broad program of government measures necessary, in the author’s opinion, for the further prosperity of the country, at a time when England, indeed, is increasingly moving towards active trading activities and the conquest of new markets. The author sees the true way to enrich the English state in protecting trade with all our might and, with the help of the fleet and weapons, dominating “over the narrow sea,” that is, the English Channel, between both English ports at that time - Dover and Calais. Among the sciences in England in the 15th century, theology continued to dominate. Dogmatic problems were still in the foreground, but next to them new ethical interests were emerging, which were put forward by life itself, in addition to theology and aside from it. Apologists for Catholic orthodoxy at this time used Latin for their polemical writings. The only exception is the theological works of Reginald Peacock, who was one of the most important English prose writers of the 15th century. In the historical and journalistic literature of the 15th century, as well as in other areas of writing, the Latin language gradually gives way to English. English journalism of the 15th century was born not within the walls of a monastery, but in a whirlpool of political passions and bloody civil strife. England's first major political writer, John Fortescue (circa 1395-1476), stood at the very center of the dynastic struggle for the throne and began his literary activity as the author of topical political pamphlets. The most important of his Latin works, written by him for Prince Edward of Lancaster, is the treatise “On the Nature of Natural Law” (De natura legis naturae), the first part of which speaks of various forms of government; unlimited monarchy (dominium regale), republic (dominium politicum) and constitutional monarchy (dominium politicum et regale). Fortescue also wrote a Latin treatise for the Prince of Lancaster, “Praise of the English Laws” (De laudibus legum Angliae, 1470). This essay is wonderful in many ways. Fiction in the proper sense of the word, however, is much more scarce in fifteenth-century England than in the previous century. Poets imitate Chaucer and for a long time cannot find their own creative paths; prose writers are few in number: next to Caxton the translator stands only Thomas Malory, published by him, with his only book of stories about the knights of the Round Table. But in the 15th century in England, as if in contrast to the relatively poor book poetry, folk poetry flourished. The ballads of England and Scotland - the most original and viable type of poetry of this time - have a strong influence on subsequent literary development. Folk drama also blooms at this time with all the fullness of life, which will have a powerful impact on the English theater of the Renaissance.

Twenty-nine pilgrims were preparing to go to Canterbury, to the relics of the saint. They met in a tavern, had dinner and talked. The pilgrims did different things in life and were from different classes.

Among the pilgrims there was a Knight who accomplished many feats and participated in many battles. He was with his son. There was also a Forester there, he was wearing green clothes, the Mother Superior of the monastery, a neat and pleasant woman, with her were a Nun and a Priest. She communicated with the Monk. He was cheerful and fat, he loved to hunt. Not far from him sat the Tax Collector. The Merchant was nearby. He was a thrifty and wealthy man. In the tavern there was a Student, a Sheriff (a wealthy landowner), who loved to drink and eat delicious food. A good Cook and a Weaver were sitting nearby. Also sitting at the table were the Weaver, the Hatmaker, the skillful Doctor, the merciful and just Priest, the Plowman, the Upholsterer, and the Carpenter. Melnik sat opposite them. And sitting nearby were the Housekeeper, the Bailiff, and the Majordomo. Also among the pilgrims were a Salesman, a Fist Fighter, a Dyer, a Skipper, and a Lawyer.

The tavern owner advised the pilgrims to tell different stories on the road, and they agreed.

The knight was the first to begin the story about Theseus. He killed the evil Creon and imprisoned his friends. They fell in love with Emilia (the sister of Theseus' wife). Theseus allowed them to fight for Emilia's hand. As a result, Emilia and Palamon got married.

The miller told about how a student outwitted a carpenter and got his wife.

The next Doctor told about Virginia. His daughter was beautiful. The county judge wanted to outwit Virginia and get his daughter. But his plan didn't work.

Econom's story completes the work. Phoebus had a white crow. He did not let his wife leave the house. While Phoebus was not at home, her lover came to her. When the husband came home, the crow told him everything. He killed his wife, sunbathed, cursed the crow, it turned black and lost its wonderful voice.

The work teaches that people from different classes with different characters, united by one idea, can find common topics for conversation.

Picture or drawing of The Canterbury Tales

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Price Realized: $7,500,000

"The Canterbury Tales"(The Canterbury Tales)the great English poet of the Middle Ages Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400), sold in 1998 at Christie's auction for $7.5 million. The book was printed in 1477 in the printing house of the English pioneer William Caxton in Westminster Abbey. He was a native of Kent and occupied the post of "Governor of the English Nation in the Netherlands", which corresponded to the current position of consul. Caxton devoted his leisure time to translating from French into English the History of the Trojan War, a popular compilation of Latin sources at the time, written by Raoul Lefebvre. It is assumed that this translation was published in Bruges between 1474 and 1476. In 1476, Caxton moved to London and founded a printing house near Westminster Abbey, where in 1477 he printed the first dated book in England, “Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophers.” Then it was the turn"The Canterbury Tales". To date, only 12 known copies of the first edition have survived, of which only the book exhibited at Christie's is in a private collection.The book has a rich history of its own: its first appearance at auction dates back to 1776, when it was sold at Christie's for £6. In 1998, the book became the property of a group of London booksellers.

In total, the pioneer printer Caxton printed about 100 books, most of them popular, 78 of them in English. “The Canterbury Tales” is a work by the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, written at the end of the 14th century in Middle English; not completed. It is a collection of 22 poetic and two prose short stories, united by a common outline: the stories are told by pilgrims heading to venerate the relics of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury and described in the author’s prologue to the work. According to Chaucer, each of them had to tell four stories (two on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back). The Canterbury Tales, which are predominantly poetic, do not use a uniform division of verse; the poet freely varies stanzas and sizes. The predominant meter is iambic 5-foot with paired rhyme (“heroic couplet”). The storytellers come from all walks of medieval English society: among them there is a knight, a monk, a priest, a doctor, a sailor, a merchant, a weaver, a cook, a yeoman, etc. Their stories partly go back to traditional novelistic plots (used, in particular, in The Book of the Good love" by Juan Ruiz and "Decamerone" by Boccaccio), are partially original. The pilgrims' stories are very diverse in theme, often related to the theme of love and betrayal; some of them satirically depict the abuses of the Catholic Church. Chaucer's literary skill is also manifested in the fact that the short stories reflect the individual traits and manner of speech of the narrators. The innovation and originality of The Canterbury Tales was appreciated only in the era of romanticism, although successors to Chaucer's traditions appeared during his lifetime (John Lydgate, Thomas Hoccleave, etc.), and the work itself was published by William Caxton in the earliest days of English printing. Researchers note the role of Chaucer's work in the formation of the English literary language and in increasing its cultural significance (as opposed to the Old French and Latin). This is a collection of stories enclosed in one frame, like Boccaccio’s “Decameron”, with the difference, however, that in Boccaccio the frame, although beautiful, is somewhat artificial, alien to reality, and the narrators, all belonging to the same class, have little to do with it. differ one from another, while Chaucer in the prologue takes the reader into the whirlpool of real life and depicts to us a society of 29 pilgrims from the most diverse walks of life, different genders, ages and temperaments. They all gathered in a tavern near London, in order from there to move together to Canterbury to venerate the tomb of St. Thomas Becket. To pass the time, each member of the society tells some fairy tale or story; at the same time, Chaucer makes the entire troupe of storytellers move, stop at taverns for the night, get acquainted with passers-by, talk, shout, exchange compliments, and sometimes blows. Each story is followed by lively comic scenes: travelers discuss the story, argue, get excited. All this makes it possible for Chaucer to create a whole range of diverse characters and types. The stories are selected in such a way that each of them corresponds to the character and social position of the narrator, and the manner of each of them is special. The confessor's story sounds like a sermon and ends with an invitation to buy indulgences and donate something to the church. The mendicant brother certainly wants to talk, but anger prevents him, and nothing comes of his story; The bourgeois woman from Bath is an unusually brightly drawn comic type, a fat, cheerful chatterbox who killed several husbands, before starting her tale she tells several autobiographical details. The knight, in accordance with his rank, tells an elegant court story about Palemon and Arsilaus (imitation of Boccaccio’s “Theseide”), the Oxford clerk tells the story about Griselda; the monk, speaking about the vicissitudes of fate, gives examples of people who experienced them; a drunken miller conveys an obscene story in the spirit of fabliau, etc. Thus, “The Canterbury Tales” is, in general, a morally descriptive novel in which the mores and types of English society contemporary to Chaucer are copied directly from life. At the same time, Chaucer not only does not disdain the depiction of people from the lower classes, but draws them with obvious sympathy and deep knowledge. Without a doubt, his material was the observations he made during his life, rich in various encounters and changes. Perhaps the influence of Wycliffe's teaching is reflected in the depiction of the character of the hypocritical and selfish mendicant brother, who, according to him, feeds only on the Bible and exhorts the sick, mainly to give more to the monks, as well as in the ideal depiction of the exemplary priest, the true shepherd of the church, and the pious peasant ; but on the basis of this one should not yet conclude that Chaucer himself belonged to the followers of Wycliffe; it should be noted that in fabliaux, the authors of which were undoubtedly devout Catholics, one can often find satirical images of church shepherds. The Canterbury Tales remained unfinished, perhaps due to the difficult circumstances that befell the poet in the last years of his life; but what exists is quite enough to judge the richness and diversity of the author’s talent.

Among literary scholars (A.N. Veselovsky, A.K. Dzhivelegov, V.E. Krusman, M.P. Alekseev, A.A. Anikst, Yu.M. Saprykin, G.V. Anikin, N.P. Mikhalskaya etc.) there is an established opinion that the work of J. Chaucer (1340-1400) “The Canterbury Tales” (1387-1400) was written under the influence of “The Decameron” (1352-1354) - the work of the largest representative of the Italian Renaissance J. Boccaccio (1313-1375).

Chaucer's book opens with a "General Prologue", in which the appearance of each of the characters is outlined. It sets the leading compositional principle used by the author. The owner of the tavern, Harry Bailey, invites pilgrims to tell entertaining stories to while away the journey to Canterbury and back. Chaucer's book consists of these stories, each of which is a complete poetic novella. “The Canterbury Tales” adjoins the ancient genre tradition of a collection of short stories and tales, united by a common plot “frame”: the situation of a conversation, the alternation of narrators. This tradition, in line with which in the XIII-XIV centuries. many works of world literature were created, under the pen of Chaucer it undergoes significant changes. He strives for greater naturalness and significance of the main plot framing the inserted short stories. Along with the “general prologue,” the characteristics of the pilgrims also contain prologues that immediately precede their stories.

A dynamic and graphically structured plot gives Chaucer the opportunity to use or parody almost all genres of medieval literature. Thus, one of the main genre components of this work is the short story. However, in addition to the short story, the work contains elements of many other medieval genres. The knight tells the story in the spirit of a chivalric romance. The abbess tells the legend of a tortured Christian boy. The carpenter tells a funny and obscene story in the spirit of humble urban folklore. The stories of the monastery chaplain and housekeeper have a fable-like character. The indulgence seller's story contains elements of a folk tale and parable.

It should be noted that each of the pilgrims’ stories arises as if by chance, from the circumstances of the conversation, complements or shades the previous one, and this closely connects them with the framing story.

J. Chaucer's innovation lies in the synthesis of genres within one work. Thus, almost every story, having a unique genre specificity, makes The Canterbury Tales a kind of “encyclopedia” of medieval genres.

G. Boccaccio in his work “The Decameron” brings to high perfection one genre - a short prose story-short story, which existed in Italian literature even before him.

In his Decameron, Boccaccio relies on medieval Latin collections of stories, bizarre oriental parables; sometimes he retells small French stories of humorous content, the so-called “fabliaux”.

“The Decameron” is not just a collection of a hundred short stories, but an ideological and artistic whole, thought out and built according to a specific plan. The short stories of The Decameron follow one another not arbitrarily, but in a certain, strictly thought-out order. They are held together by a framing story, which is an introduction to the book and gives it a compositional core. With this construction, the narrators of individual short stories are participants in the introductory, framing story. In this story, which gives the entire collection internal integrity and completeness, the author tells how the short stories of The Decameron arose.

Thus, we can conclude that, perhaps, when creating his work, J. Chaucer borrowed a compositional technique that Boccaccio had previously used when creating the Decameron. However, in Chaucer one can note a closer connection between individual stories and the narrative that frames them. He strives for greater naturalness and significance of the main plot framing the “inserted” stories, which cannot be noted in the work of Boccaccio.

Despite the identical composition and several random plot coincidences, Chaucer's work is completely unique. It should be noted that in stories comparable in plot, Chaucer's narration is almost always more detailed, more extensive and detailed, in many moments it becomes more intense, more dramatic and significant. And if in relation to “The Canterbury Tales” we can talk about the genre diversity of this work, then “The Decameron” is a work in which only the short story genre is presented to perfection. However, this does not mean that Boccaccio’s work is of less value for world literature. With his work, Boccaccio deals a crushing blow to the religious-ascetic worldview and gives an unusually complete, vivid and versatile reflection of modern Italian reality. In his short stories, Boccaccio depicts a huge variety of events, images, motives, and situations. He displays a whole gallery of figures taken from various strata of modern society and endowed with features typical of them. It is thanks to Boccaccio that the short story is established as a full-fledged independent genre, and the Decameron itself, imbued with the spirit of advanced national culture, has become a model for many generations of not only Italian, but also European writers.

Literature

1.Anikin G.V. History of English literature: Textbook. for students ped. Institute / G. V. Anikin, N. P. Michalskaya. 2nd ed., revised. and additional M.: Higher. school, 1985. 431 p.

2. History of Western European literature. Middle Ages and Renaissance: Textbook. for philol. specialist. universities / Alekseev M.P. [and etc.]. 5th ed., rev. and additional M.: Higher. school, 1999. 462 pp.: ill.

3. Literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: textbook. manual for universities / T.V. Kovaleva [etc.]; Ed. Ya.N. Zasursky. Mn.: Universitetsky Publishing House, 1988. 238 p.: ill.