Chaucers Contribution to

English Language and Literature

Introduction
Contribution to English Language
Contribution to English Literature
Contribution to Versification
The Content of Poetry
Contribution to Eng. Drama & Novel
Introduction
Literature: subject to the law of evolutionary
development.
Chaucers contribution to the evolution of
English poetry or literature.
He is acclaimed as the first realist, the first
humorist, the first narrative artist, the first
great character-painter, and the first great
metrical artist in English literature.


Contribution to English Language
Lowell says, He found English a dialect and
left it a language.
No national language.
The four prominent regional languages: The
Southern, the Midland, The Northern or
Northumbrian, and The Kentish.
The Midland or The East Midland dialect,
spoken in London and its surrounding area was
the simplest in grammar and syntax.



John Gower (1330-84) used the Midland for his
poem Confession Amantis .
John Wycliffe (1320-84) for his translation on the
Bible (1380).
William Langland (1330-86) in his Piers the
Plowman (1362) used a mixture of the Southern
and Midland dialects.
Chaucer employed in his work the Midland or
The East Midland dialect, and raised it to the
level of the National Language of England.
He is credited with the first national poet of
England.

Besides the four prominent dialects, there were
also Latin and French which were more
fashionable than the poor vernacular English.
Latin was considered the universal language:
used by the Church and the learned.
French was the language of the court.
Perplexed by the variety of languages, John
Gower, Chaucers friend, wrote his Mirour del
Omme in French, Vox Clamants (1382) in Latin
and Confession Amants (1390) in English.
English was a despised language.
Contribution to English Literature
His striking contribution to versification.
He sounded the death-knell of the Old
Saxon alliterative measure & firmly
established the modern one.
The old alliterative measure was
employed by Langland for his Piers the
Plowman.
The important features of the old measure
which Chaucer disowned:

There is no regularity in the number of syllables in each
line. One line may have as few as six syllables and another
as many as fourteen.
The use of alliteration as the chief ornamental device and
as the lone structural principle. All the alliterative syllables
are stressed.
The absence of end-rimes; and
Frequent repetition to express vehemence and intensity of
emotion.
For that old-fashioned meaaure, he substituted the
regular line with the new measure:
All lines have the same number of syllables,
End-rime,
Absence of alliteration and frequent repetition.




No important poet after him thought of reverting to the
old measure.
Chaucer may be designated the father of modern
versification.
In Canterbury Tales he mostly uses lines of ten syllables
each and the lines run into couplet; that is, each couplet of
lines has its end-syllables rhyming with each other.
His eyes twinkled in his heed aright
As doon the sterres in the frosty night.
In Troilus and Cryseyde he uses the seven-line stanza of
dedasyllabic lines having the rhyme-scheme: a b a b b c c.
He borrowed the measure from French and it is called
The Rhyme-royal or Chaucerian Stanza.





The Content of His Poetry
The content of poetry is also highly indebted to
him.
He gave poetry a new dress, a new body and a new
soul.
His major contribution: his advocacy and adherece
to realism.
In The Canterbury Tales, he deals with real men,
manners, and life.
Before, he wrote allegorical and dream poetry and
its content was as remote from life as a dream is
from reality.




He brought a healthy realism to
poetry (closer to nature or reality).
He became a painter of life in words.
The Canterbury Tales is the product
of this realization (a mirror to the
life: its manners and morals).
The portraits of the pilgrims in The
Prologue are universal .





Contribution to English
Drama and Novel
Chaucers poetry: a modern outlook on life.
He brought the art of characterization.
He is a pioneer in the shift from mere
narrative to characterization.
His dramatic method is also worth noting.
His mode of characterization is static or
descriptive, but in the tales, its dynamic or
dramatic.


The characters reveals themselves through what
they say and what they do.
He was a forerunner of English Drama.
Chaucers realistic descriptive method makes him
a precursor of the English novel.
His tales are replete with intense human interest
and his narration is lively and direct.
Vivid characterization is the primary job of a
novelist.
A novel, according to Meredith, should be a
summary of actual life. Its Chaucers originality
in The Canterbury Tales.