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Unit 2: The Age of Chaucer

2.1 Chaucer’s Age-Both Medieval and Modern Notes

Chaucer’s age-like most historical ages-was an age of transition. This transition implies a shift
from the medieval to the modern times, the emergence of the English nation from the “dark ages”
to the age of enlightenment. Though some elements associated with modernity were coming into
prominence,-yet mostly and essentially the age was medieval-unscientific, superstitious, chivalrous,
religious-minded, and “backward” in most respects. The fourteenth century, as J. M. Manly puts it
in The Cambridge History of English Literature, was “a dark epoch of the history of England”.
However, the silver lining of modernity did “succeed in piercing, here and there, the thick darkness
of ignorance and superstition. In fact, the age of Chaucer was not stagnant: it was inching its way
steadily and surely to the dawn of the Renaissance and the Reformation, which were yet a couple
of centuries ahead. We cannot agree with Kitteredge who calls Chaucer’s age “a singularly modern
time”. For that matter, not to speak of the fourteenth, even the eighteenth century was not “modern”
in numerous respects. What we notice in the fourteenth century is the start of the movement
towards the modern times, and not the accomplishment of that movement, which was going to be
a march of marathon nature. Robert Dudely French observes: “It was an age of restlessness, amid
the ferment” of new life, that Chaucer lived and wrote. Old things and new appear side by side on
his pages, and in his poetry we can study the essential spirit, both of the age that was passing and
of the age that was to come.”What are these “old things and new:’ and what made the age restless?
The answer will be provided if we discuss the chief events and features of the age.

2.2 The Hundred Years’ War

The period between 1337 and 1453 is marked by a long succession of skirmishes between France
and England, which are collectively known as the “Hundred Years War”. Under the able and
warlike guidance of King Edward III (1327-1377) England won a number of glorious victories,
particularly at Crecy, Poietiers, and Agincourt. The French might crumbled and Edward was once
acknowledged even the king of France. But later, after his demise and with the succession of the
incompetent Richard II, the English might waned and the French were able to secure tangible
gains. The war influenced fie English character in the following two ways:
The fostering of nationalistic sentiment; and
The demolition of some social barriers between different classes of society.
It was obviously natural for the conflict to have engendered among the English a strong feeling of
national solidarity and patriotic fervour. But, as Compton-Rickett reminds us, “the fight is
memorable not merely for stimulating the pride of English men.” It is important, too, for the
second reason given above. It was not the aristocracy alone which secured the victory for England.
The aristocracy was vitally supported by the lowly archers whose feats with the bow were a force
to reckon with. Froissart, the French chronicler, referring to the English archers says: “They let fly
their arrows so wholly together and so thick that it seemed snow”.

Notes The recognition of the services of the humble archers brought in a note of
democratization in the country, and the age-old “iron curtain” between the nobility
and the proletariat developed a few chinks. This was an advance from medievalism
to modernism.

2.3 The Age of Chivalry

Nevertheless, the dawn of the modern era was yet far away. Compton-Rickett observes: “Chaucer’s
England is ‘Still characteristically medieval, and nowhere is the conservative feeling more strongly
marked than in the persistence of chivalry. This strange amalgam of love, war, and religion so far

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