Geoffrey Chaucer (11) Poem by Sylvia Frances Chan

GEOFFREY CHAUCER (11)
as narrated by Sylvia Frances Chan, the dutch poetess
My Foreword:
I have told here why I had begun to submit poems about the English author/poet Geoffrey Chaucer.
It is very important to KNOW that the English language has not always been like this.
We must be grateful to Geoffrey Chaucer.
He submitted from Latin the English language
as it has become today,
then called medieval English, but it is English for all readers.

SEQUEL 11: All the Series are submitted on Poem Hunter. Com.
It is of great importance to know about Geoffrey Chaucer,
for us as poets who write and submit in this language.

Poem Hunter.com is THE place for me to submit these Sequels about Geoffrey Chaucer. The narrative style is the style I use,
to be crystal clear about Geoffrey Chaucer
Thank you so much for your attention. Please Enjoy!

Chaucer uses the ancient world as a fictional or ostensibly historical setting for stories set in a pagan past.
He finds an abundance of stories, information, and sayings that he can use in his poetry.
Moreover, it provides him with a collection of texts with authoritative status.
In the Middle Ages, original work was not highly valued.

Retelling stories is a way of making old material interesting,
by adapting it to the concerns of the new author and his audience.
As he puts it himself in the Parliament of Fowls,
like harvesting new crops from old fields.

For out of olde feldes, as men seyth,
Cometh all this newe corn from yer to yere,
And out of olde bokes, in good feyth,
Cometh all this newe science that men learnt.

However, Chaucer did not do this in Latin,
but in English, a language that was then spoken
and understood only in a remote corner of the world
and which was also divided into a multitude of local dialects
and subject to rapid change.

Yet Chaucer used English to make direct contact with the great classical authors and to create
the first English literature that can be compared to them.

Greek classics
Greek was virtually unknown in medieval Western Europe
and Latin dominated the classical tradition.
The few known Greek authors were read in Latin translation,

I will continue next time in Sequel (12)
and I will write more about the Greek Classics.
Thank you for reading, best regards, Sylvia Frances Chan.