Here I'm writing a blog on comparative analysis of the most famous writers
1. GEOFFREY CHAUCER
2. EDMUND SPENCER
3. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Given by DR.DILIPSIR BARAD...
So! let's start with THE AGE OF CHAUCER.....
# INTRODUCTION:-
Geoffery Chaucer( 1342-1400) was the outstanding English poet before Shakespeare and "THE FIRST FOUNDER OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE." Chaucer is considered as one of the first great English poets. His The Canterbury Tales ranks as one of the greatest poetic works in English. He also contributed importantly in the second half of the 14th century to the management of public affairs as courtier, diplomat, and civil servant. In that career he was trusted and aided by three successive kings—Edward III, Richard II, and Henry IV. But it is his avocation—the writing of poetry—for which he is remembered.
Perhaps the chief characteristics of Chaucer’s works are their variety in subject matter, genre, tone, and style and in the complexities presented concerning the human pursuit of a sensible existence. Yet his writings also consistently reflect an all-pervasive humour combined with serious and tolerant consideration of important philosophical questions. From his writings Chaucer emerges as poet of love, both earthly and divine, whose presentations range from lustful cuckoldry to spiritual union with God. Thereby, they regularly lead the reader to speculation about man’s relation both to his fellows and to his Maker, while simultaneously providing delightfully entertaining views of the frailties and follies, as well as the nobility, of mankind.
( Here is the informative video about Geoffrey Chaucer)
# HIS MAJOR WORKS ARE,...
1. The Canterbury Tales ( Most famous work of Chaucer)
2. House of fame
3. Legend of good women
4. The book of the Dutchess
5. The Man of Law's tale
The Canterbury tales is written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century, The Canterbury Tales tells the story of a group of 31 pilgrims who meet while travelling from the Tabard Inn in Southwark to the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury.
# What Is The Canterbury Tales About?
This collection acts as social satire, portraying a comedic and exaggerated depiction of medieval society, mainly the roles of the Church, the nobility, and the peasantry. He uses humor and realism to shed light on the hypocrisy of the Church and the societal issues of Medieval England. Although most of the tales focus on the importance of morality, many characters use explicit vulgarity that focus on tragedy or sex. At times, the host becomes overwhelmed with the emotional toll of listening to these stories, and begs the group to switch to stories about love of chivalry instead. The stories are told from the perspective of "Chaucer", who acts as a participant narrator, interrupting the story and providing his own input. He promises to tell the stories as accurately as he can. The host critically describes the characters in great detail, pointing out their absurdity in appearance and behavior.
Here is the vedio of Canterbury tales by Arpita Karwa it is also help in NET/GSET papers)
# LANGUAGE OF CHAUCER:-
Geoffrey Chaucer's 'The Canterbury Tales' uses similes and metaphors to describe the characters. Learn about how similes and metaphors are used in stories such as 'The Miller's Tale' and 'The Wife of Bath Tale.The Canterbury Tales is one of the best loved works in the history of English literature. Written in "Middle English", the story follows a group of pilgrims who are travelling the long journey from London to Canterbury Cathedral.
To someone reading Chaucer for the first time, his language looks both familiar and foreign. Many of the words are the same as in Present Day English; others are recognizable but strangely spelled; still others are completely unintelligible. Some sentences make instant sense; others may unravel partway through.
Still another way is to get a historical sense of the structure of Chaucer's language. Old English, the language of Beowulf, and of England before the eleventh century Norman conquest, is a Germanic language. Chaucer's day, English has been flooded with French. Chaucer's poetic vocabulary contains about 8,000 words, of which about 4,000 are French. But Chaucer's function words (pronouns, demonstratives, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs) are from Old English; we still have the same set of function words today, and these are among the most recognizable of his words to us. This is fortunate for two reasons: it is the function words, the grammatical connective tissues, that convey sentence meaning; and these words are particularly important to Chaucer's literary style, which is adjective-poor compared to later styles like Shakespeare's. The adjectives are there in the natural language, but medieval poetry is interested in the kind of nuance conveyed by the relational elements in a sentence.
# WRITING STYLE OF CHAUCER:-
Geoffrey Chaucer is one of those great English poets of the Middle Ages, who due to their versatile poetry and eloquent writing skills are known to be the pioneers of English poetry.
Due to his powerful writing skills, he is widely known as the Father of English. He began writing in English language when it was barely developed as a complete language.
Though Chaucer wrote a number of moral and amatory lyrics, which were imitated by his 15th-century followers, his major achievements were in the field of narrative poetry. The early influence of French courtly love poetry (notably the Roman de la Rose, which he translated) gave way to an interest in Italian literature.
His aim was to show the people that English could be a powerful language when written properly. He, in a very short span of time achieved such command on his language that it portrayed a level of elegance that other authors had not achieved, and because of his powerful writing style, he was entitled as the first National Poet of England.
# THEMATIC STYLE OF CHAUCER:-
One present theme throughout The Canterbury Tales is the importance of social status during Chaucer's time. For example, the Prioress and the Parson are opposite characters in their regard for social status. The Parson is more concerned with his religious devotion than his class.
# GENERES USED IN CHAUCER'S WORKS:-
Through this device of the storytelling contest, Chaucer integrates a varied collection of literary genres: allegorical tale, courtly romance, fabliau, and more.
So here we can say that Geoffrey Chaucer is one of the pioneer poet of 14th century and he played a vital role in old English literature.
So let's move further and talk about AGE OF SPENCER...
# INTRODUCTION:-
The Age of Spenser in English literature refers to the latter half of the sixteenth century, a period that coincided with the reign of the last Tudor monarch Queen Elizabeth I, who brilliantly bound the destiny of England to the cause of her own success. Thus, a primary object of sixteenth-century English Renaissance writers—whose livelihood depended heavily upon literary patronage and the Court's favor—was the creation of a national literature befitting England's emerging status as a formidable world power and the implicit, and often explicit, celebration of the Queen herself.
Considered the golden age of English history, Elizabeth's reign was an era of increased religious tolerance and relative peace until the war with Spain and the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. During Elizabeth's tenure treasury coffers were replenished, shipping, trade, and commerce proliferated, and new roads were built that helped unify and connect the English population.
Parliament also passed many reform laws touching currency, aid to the poor, agriculture, and industry. It was only in the last decade of Elizabeth's reign that England's fortunes soured and the country was again vexed by debt and increased internal strife. Yet her rule was primarily a time of peace, national unity, and affluence. This prosperity, coupled with Elizabeth's fervent patronage of the arts, nurtured the English Renaissance which peaked during her era. Virtually all fields flourished, including music, architecture, and painting, but especially literature, where important works appeared in the genres of drama, poetry, and prose.
# EDMUND SPENCER WAS THE PIONEER POET OF HIS AGE...
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)English poet whose long allegorical poem The Faerie Queene is one of the greatest in the English language. It was written in what came to be called the Spenserian stanza.
Charles Lamb called Edmund Spenser the "poet's poet" in response to Spenser's innovation in form and poetics. Charles Lamb was a well-known English essayist, and once he coined the phrase, many others followed suit and referred to Spenser as the "poet's poet."
Little is certainly known about Spenser. He was related to a noble Midlands family of Spencer, whose fortunes had been made through sheep raising. His own immediate family was not wealthy. He was entered as a “poor boy” in the Merchant Taylors’ grammar school, where he would have studied mainly Latin, with some Hebrew, Greek, and music.
In 1569, when Spenser was about 16 years old, his English versions of poems by the 16th-century French poet Joachim du Bellay and his translation of a French version of a poem by the Italian poet Petrarch appeared at the beginning of an anti-Catholic prose tract, A Theatre for Voluptuous Worldlings; they were no doubt commissioned by its chief author, the wealthy Flemish expatriate Jan Baptista van der Noot. (Some of these poems Spenser later revised for his Complaints volume.)
From May 1569 Spenser was a student in Pembroke Hall (now Pembroke College) of the University of Cambridge, where, along with perhaps a quarter of the students, he was classed as a sizar—a student who, out of financial necessity, performed various menial or semi-menial duties. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1573. Because of an epidemic, Spenser left Cambridge in 1574, but he received the Master of Arts degree in 1576.
His best-known friend at Cambridge was the slightly older Gabriel Harvey, a fellow of Pembroke, who was learned, witty, and enthusiastic for ancient and modern literature but also pedantic, devious, and ambitious. There is no reason to believe that Spenser shared the most distasteful of these qualities, but, in the atmosphere of social mobility and among the new aristocracy of Tudor England, it is not surprising that he hoped for preferment to higher position.
For more information about Edmund spencer CLICK HERE
# MAJOR WORKS OF SPENCER:-
1. THE FAERIE QUEEN (Masterpiece of Spencer)
2. THE SHEPHEARDES CALENDAR
3. AMORETTI
4. SONNET 75
5. SONNET 54
6. THE SHORTER POEMS
# THE FAERIE QUEEN:-
Spenser is most famous for writing his unfinished epic, The Faerie Queene, though he also produced a wide array of other literary works.
The Faerie Queene, one of the great long poems in the English language, written in the 16th century by Edmund Spenser. As originally conceived, the poem was to have been a religious-moral-political allegory in 12 books, each consisting of the adventures of a knight representing a particular moral virtue; Book I, for example, recounts the legend of the Red Cross Knight, or Holiness. The knights serve the Faerie Queene, who represents Glory and Queen Elizabeth I. The first installment of the poem (Books I–III) was published in 1590; the second (Books IV–VI), in 1596. The first folio edition appeared in 1609.
The poem derives its form from the Italian romance—for example, in the division into books and cantos and the inventive energy of the entrelacement (the continually bifurcating and infolded narrative). The poem is written in what came to be known as the Spenserian stanza: eight lines of 10 syllables followed by one 12-syllable line, rhyming ababbcbcc.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE FAERIE QUEEN CLICK HERE..
# LANGUAGE OF SPENCER:-
Spenser's systematically archaic diction, E. K. argues, ought to be interpreted as a patriotic attempt at language enrichment, part of the wider Elizabethan practice of 'embellishing' the English tongue tobring it into parity and equal commerce with the well-established vernaculars of continental Europe.
# WRITING STYLE OF SPENCER:-
Spenser used a distinctive verse form, called the Spenserian stanza, in several works, including The Faerie Queene. The stanza's main metre is iambic pentameter with a final line in iambic hexameter (having six feet or stresses, known as an Alexandrine), and the rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc.
# THEMATIC STYLE OF SPENCER:-
Spenser's sonnets deal largely with the idea of love. Up until Sonnet 67, the sonnets primarily focus on the frustration of unreturned romantic desires.
Edmund Spencer was used to wrote epic poems and so many sonnets.
So here we can say that Elizabethan age was totally incomplete without Spencer's contribution.
AT LAST LET'S TALK ABOUT WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE..
# INTRODUCTION:-
William Shakespeare, Shakespeare also spelled Shakspere, byname Bard of Avon or Swan of Avon, (1564-1616)English poet, dramatist, and actor often called the English national poet and considered by many to be the greatest dramatist of all time.
While Shakespeare was regarded as the foremost dramatist of his time, evidence indicates that both he and his contemporaries looked to poetry, not playwriting, for enduring fame. Shakespeare's sonnets were composed between 1593 and 1601, though not published until 1609.
Shakespeare is widely recognised as the greatest English poet the world has ever known. Not only were his plays mainly written in verse, but he also penned 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems and a few other minor poems.
His craftiness created words and phrases that we still use today, although many do not know where they come from (until they read his poetry and plays, that is). Shakespeare, although immortalized, was a human being and he used his human experience and the world around him as inspiration for his work.
Today we remember Shakespeare as the greatest playwright of all time; however, in his own lifetime, he was equally revered as a poet.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT SHAKESPEARE
# MAJOR POEMS (SONNETS) OF SHAKESPEARE:-
1. THE SONNETS
2. A LOVER'S COMPLAINT
3. A FAIRY SONG
4. VENUES AND ADONIS
5. ALL THE WORLD'S STAGE
(Click here for famous poem by william shakespeare)
# LANGUAGE OF SHAKESPEARE:-
The language in which Shakespeare wrote is referred to as Early Modern English, a linguistic period that lasted from approximately 1500 to 1750. The language spoken during this period is often referred to as Elizabethan English or Shakespearian English. It falls between two major linguistic stages in the history of English: Middle English, the language written and spoken during the Middle Ages, most famously by Chaucer, and Modern English, the language we write and speak today.
By the end of the 16th century, the English language had changed significantly from Middle English, and was in many respects very close to what we speak today.
While the use of the apostrophe for genitive expressions was not fully established until the 18th century, Shakespeare used it in his plays. Negatives were no longer marked with the older ‘ne’ but instead by ‘not’.
# WRITING STYLE OF SHAKESPEARE:-
The verse form he uses is blank verse. It contains no rhyme, but each line has an internal rhythm with a regular rhythmic pattern. The pattern most favored by Shakespeare is iambic pentameter. Iambic pentameter is defined as a ten-syllable line with the accent on every other syllable, beginning with the second one.
As he got more comfortable, he started using the language derived from the needs of characters. The main idea of Shakespeare's writing style was to make his heroes talk in the natural language while being quite poetic. The writer used a pattern consisting of unrhymed iambic pentameter, which was called blank verse.
# THEMATIC STYLE OF SHAKESPEARE:-
The Shakespearean sonnets cover such themes as the passage of time, love, infidelity, jealousy, beauty and mortality. The first 126 are addressed to a young man; the last 28 are either addressed to, or refer to, a woman.
Shakespeare begins his sonnets by introducing six of his most important themes—beauty, time, decay, immortality, procreation and selfishness, which are interrelated in sonnet 1 both thematically and through the use of images associated with business or commerce.
> So here we conclude that all the 3 poets were highly influenced and famous poets of their ages. And we can easily differentiate each of three with their writing language, style and thematic style.
Thank you for reading my blog..
Happy learning and loving literature📚.
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