Introduction

Chapter 1. Love and female images in Chaucer's stories

Chapter 2. Marriage in the Canterbury Tales

Chapter 3

Conclusion

Introduction

The study of matrimonial relations in a certain cultural space is impossible without knowledge of the historical and cultural identity of the era under study, as well as the specifics of the normative perception of these relations. As for other European countries, medieval Britain of the 14th century is characterized by a combination of several, sometimes contradictory, trends in the assessment of matrimony.

Courtly culture forms a completely new look at the nature of the relationship between a woman and a man. An idealized, largely invented system of relations dictated a different attitude towards a woman and love. The usefulness of a knight was determined not only by his valor, but also by his feeling for a woman. The understatement and potentiality of relations of this kind destroyed the usual perception, but at the same time, the prohibition and conflict inherent in this feeling did not allow going beyond the ethical ideas of this society. The beauty and artificiality of literary images and the ideal nature of love relationships contrasted sharply with the real prose of life. But the creation of this model presupposes a person's inner desire for such relationships.

It was precisely in these difficult times for the British writer Geoffrey Chaucer (Geoffrey Chaucer, between 1340 and 1345 - 1400) around 1380 that his greatest work matured, which introduces the poet into the ranks of the most remarkable writers of England and from which, in fact, begins new - renaissance - British literature. This is a collection of poetic short stories "The Canterbury Tales", fanned by the spirit of the Renaissance love of life. Earthly life appears in it as the highest good of man. True, Chaucer pays tribute to the religious views of the Middle Ages. This is evidenced at least by the life of St. Kekilia included in the book. Also, Chaucer never questions the necessity of the religious institutions themselves, although he sharply criticizes the contemporary practice of the Catholic Church - the influence of time affects. One gets the impression that Chaucer is worried about the fate of Christianity and the personal fate of a person in connection with the dogma, and not outside of it.

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is an extremely important source for the study of the ethics of family relations in different strata of society in medieval Britain. They reflect the combination of life practice, ideal ideas and personal characteristics of the author. The Canterbury Tales were written by Chaucer under the direct influence of G. Boccaccio's Decameron, when Chaucer was already a well-known and popular writer. Under the influence of regional dominants and nationally determined worldview, the form, content, ideas and images of The Canterbury Tales acquired a specifically British flavor.

Using the heritage of French literature, especially fablio, Chaucer's interpretation of the theme of love does not coincide with his sources. In most cases, love is presented in the Canterbury Tales in a more socially significant sense, the interpretation of family relations acquires a social sharpness. Still, Chaucer is trying to find the deep sources of the problems he posed.

The Canterbury Tales takes the form of a collection of short stories, characteristic of its time. They are grouped either by topic or by function. In general, despite the presence of the most diverse topics, The Canterbury Tales can be described as a book containing a public orientation. The importance of socially significant topics is one of the features of the British worldview.

Chaucer wrote only the prologue and part of the journey to Canterbury, the return journey remained unwritten. But in the extensive prologue, Chaucer gives an extensive gallery of masterfully executed portraits of pilgrims - these are people from different parts of England, representatives of various professions and social status, with different interests, tastes, manners and aesthetic predilections. They are united by a purely external motive: they all go to Canterbury to worship the coffin of St. Thomas Becket and, to speed up the journey, each tell two short stories on the way there and back. The whole of medieval Britain appears before us, and the very frame of the short stories - the journey of pilgrims to Canterbury - is a characteristic household detail drawn from the everyday life of England at that time.

Chaucer simply could not show his pilgrims without describing their vivid individual qualities; I wanted to convey living ideas to the reader, and for this we needed living people. Chaucer's people are emotionally wider, more independent, their world is multifaceted, constrained not by the mask of their "type", but only by their personal character. Chaucer shows: the world is imperfect, it happens in different ways, people behave differently, there are many reasons for this, both objective and subjective. Each hero of Chaucer has his own destiny, which he cannot overcome. But at the same time, they choose their own path on their own, and each of them carries some kind of social burden. Some of the characters are moral, others are immoral.

Despite the fact that Chaucer used borrowed sources in composing his work, he constantly informs the reader of his own reasoning that arose in the process of writing. Chaucer thinks all the time, and then issues his verdict. Apparently, Chaucer is not entirely satisfied with the interpretation of events provided by his source-hero - his interest is in the field of psychological portrayal of characters, his heroes are consistent with the circumstances, and with the movements of their souls, and with their special, often complex personal disposition.

Interpretation by J. Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales necessarily entails a transformation towards greater drama of the action and character, greater vitality, showing the tragedy of ongoing events and human actions.

Mainly in the "Canterbury Tales" we are talking about people who own real estate in the city, as well as professionally associated with the city: first of all, these are merchants, artisans, officials, and less often - knights. The study of family and marriage relations is one of the most relevant areas in the Canterbury Tales. In the traditional way of medieval society, the family was one of the main microstructures that determined the status of a person, the form of his behavior, the system of personal relationships. The study of traditional family ways in various social strata provides an opportunity, indirectly, through the moral and ethical attitudes of each group, to understand the specifics of their corporate and individual ideas. The study of the family also provides an opportunity to look into the inner world of a person, to explore his most intimate and hidden side of life. It becomes possible to determine the behavioral norms in which the individual exists, his needs and the possibility of going beyond these norms.

Chapter 1. Love and female images in Chaucer's stories

Based on the image of women in the Canterbury Tales and the attitude of the characters towards them, one can conclude that, despite the numerous monologues of women in the first person, one can trace a pronounced attitude towards a woman from a male point of view, from the position of an observer of what is happening. Admiration for some women, contempt and indignation towards others, ironic indulgence towards others, etc. are in the nature of social interest in the development of the image, all problems are presented by Chaucer from a socially significant position.

The humanistic view of the nature of the relationship between a man and a woman in the Canterbury Tales is a completely new perception of the feeling of love. Love becomes an integral feature of a full-fledged human life, it fills it with colors and a hitherto unknown meaning.

Love appears in Chaucer both as a simple carnal attraction, usually associated with trickery (the stories of a miller, a majordomo, a skipper, and a merchant using a popular frivolous episode) or even with a crime (a doctor's story), and as an all-consuming passion (a knight's story). She experiences human nobility (Franklin's story about a faithful wife whom a page in love wants to possess with the help of magic - by the way, the story includes a long list of persistent maidens and wives who have gained fame and who sought salvation from shame in death). Thus, for example, in the doctor's story one can see the same connection between love and suffering that runs through other "moral stories". Referring to Titus Livius, this educated physician tells of the virtuous Virginia, who decided to die rather than fall prey to the voluptuous scoundrel Appianus and Claudius' assistant. Virginia loves God and her purity (as can be seen from her name) and suffers for this love. Her father Virginius is faced with a choice: kill his daughter or give her to dishonor (he chooses the first).

As mentioned above, Chaucer in the General Prologue warns the reader that the stories of the characters can be ambiguous or immodest, but he justifies this by the desire to convey everything as it was, to tell the truth. In this context, attention is drawn to the expressive portrait of a broken weaver from Bath, a woman no longer in her first youth, but still very energetic. She is rich and enjoys weight in her city. None of the local women dare to enter the parish church before her, because everyone knows that she will not reach into her pocket for a word. She was already married five times, but she buried all her husbands (and no less number of lovers) and now dreams of a sixth.

Nevertheless, in the story of the Weaver of Bath, the problem of the connection between beauty and the wife's infidelity is touched upon. The Batskaya weaver - the "merry widow" - sets out her views on family and marriage life, and also very frankly tells about how deftly she managed with her husbands. Thus, the Weaver of Bath literally rejected the then religious and moral doctrine, on which the social structure of the medieval British family was based. By the way, Chaucer, without directly condemning the behavior of the Bath weaver, nevertheless mentions that the color of her youth has passed, she is deaf, ugly, and it is unlikely that something good awaits her in old age, although she swaggers, and this expresses the author’s craving for justice, to moralizing.

Knowing how to appreciate strength, unceremonious dexterity and material gain, the skipper from the breed of sea wolves brings Fablio's attention to the merchant's wife, who, for the hundred francs she needs to pay for the outfits, is given to a quick-witted monk who receives this money from her merchant husband.

Unlike the Bath weaver and the merchant's wife in the "moral" stories (knight, Franklin, etc.), the outer beauty of a woman is equal to her inner beauty, i.e. chastity.

The characters of the pilgrims are usually associated with their stories drawn from a variety of sources, whether they are edifying collections of the Middle Ages, fablios, adventurous chivalric stories, ancient literature, works of Italian humanists of the 14th century. or incidents taken directly from life. Thus, having valued books above all else and knowing, of course, Latin, a student from Oxford retells the final short story of the Decameron about the long-suffering Griselda, known to him from the Latin translation of Petrarch. At the end of the Student's story and in Chaucer's conclusion to this story, one can see that change of points of view, which is characteristic of all Gothic art. The pathetic story about the patient Griselda has just ended, an allegorical interpretation of this story is given, and suddenly the student declares that now you will not find a single Griselda, and in his song advises the wives to have fun and torment their husbands in every possible way. On the other hand, the story of the landowner says: "She agreed to recognize him as her husband and master, Since husbands can be masters of their wives."

Thus, Chaucer summarizes a happy marriage, provided, however, that the man renounces the dominant position in the family (it is not difficult to guess that the story with a similar tendency belongs to the Weaver of Bath). As for Chaucer himself, he avoids the flat moralization characteristic of medieval didactics. After all, for each story, the narrator, endowed with certain views and tastes, is responsible in each case. Chaucer seems to step aside and simply observe the course of life in medieval Britain.

Sometimes Chaucer deployed (but very secretive at the same time) ironic. So, in the story of the steward, he lists cases of windiness and inconstancy in the animal world, which are always shown by females - a she-wolf and a cat, and then summarizes:

“All these examples refer to men who have become unfaithful, and not to women at all. For men always have more desire to satisfy their thirst for base things than their wives.

A certain nobleman tells in a short story about a lady who, in the absence of her beloved husband, promised to answer the passion of a page in love with her if he cleared the coast of Brittany from underwater rocks. Promising this, she was sure of the impossibility of such a task. Meanwhile, her admirer, with the help of a sorcerer, did what was required, and the lady found herself faced with the need to fulfill the promise. The need for this was recognized by the husband who returned home, although, according to him, he would prefer to fall with a heart pierced in battle. Touched by the enormity of the sacrifice, the page “decided to renounce his lust so that the knightly law would not be offended by a vile act,” and freed the object of his love from fulfilling the promise, although the services of the sorcerer cost him 1,000 pounds of gold. But with such general generosity, the sorcerer was at his best: he refused the payment, having learned that the page was ruined in vain. Far from rhetorically, Chaucer asks: which of them do you think is more generous? The husband who sent his beloved wife to her admirer, so as not to dishonor her by not keeping this word? Or a page in love who renounced his rights? Or, finally, that philosopher who owned the secrets of magic, who did not agree to accept payment for his work?

Chapter 2. Marriage in the Canterbury Tales

“Wait a minute, my story has not yet begun.

When you hear it, you will sing differently.

In that barrel there will be bitterer ale,

than everything I've said so far.

Oh, I know, hardly anyone knows better

what a scourge matrimony takes

My taxes - I myself am that scourge.

And you call caution to yourself,

And consult, then decide

sip the horn. And then do not repent

That the ale of matrimony is not painfully sweet;

I will give examples, how nasty he is.

The study of normative behavior and the declared perception of marriage must have a clear relationship with reality, only in this case we can count on an adequate understanding of the specifics of matrimonial relations in the era of Chaucer.

Realizing all the difficulties of extracting the material of family and marriage relations from a literary source, it is possible to draw on the material of the Canterbury Tales when we find clear parallels in plots and characters with documentary material. What is of interest is Chaucer's own vision of the problem, for example, his attitude towards marriage or his ideas about possible family relationships.

Chaucer was able to reflect the main trends in family and marriage relations in Britain in the mid-14th century: ridiculing the simpleton of a man, exposing the vices of a woman, prejudice to marriage, the traditional view of marriage, where a woman and a man a priori received their qualitative personifications.

At the very end of the Knight's Tale, the marriage of Palamon and Emilia is mentioned. This allows, to some extent, to compare the Knight's Tale with the stories of the so-called "Marriage Group".

Franklin's story shows the ideal marriage, the one hinted at at the end of the Knight's story and the Bath Weaver's story. It is based on mutual trust and freedom. Although some researchers find, on the basis of a study of medieval marriage contracts, contradictions in this marriage.

This method made it possible to consider the traditional divorce practice in England in the 14th-15th centuries, as well as to look at matrimonial problems through the eyes of contemporaries themselves. Drawing a number of parallels with the traditions of other European states, we resort to comparative research methods. This allows us to identify both common and unique trends in the development of the British urban family.

The story is based on a rash promise by Dorigena. According to D. Brewer, “Chaucer reveals the ambivalence of deep values, or that values ​​good in themselves may be incompatible with each other - a good Gothic point illustrated again in the Clerk s Tale and in Troilus".

“What is more attractive in life than marriage? Especially when you are old and your wife should be young, and then you will give birth to an heir with her: life will be sweet to you. And look at the life of a bachelor: He often complains of boredom, he is tired of love fuss. And it is fair that a bachelor lead a life devoid of joys and blessings. He builds on sand, and therefore only failure is destined for him. He lives freely, like game in the forest, knowing nothing about coercion. A married man, on the contrary, always leads a measured life, He is tied tightly to the marriage yoke, and life is sweet and joyful to him. Who can be more tender than a wife? Who with more diligence than she, When you are sick, goes after you? She is ready to serve you as a faithful servant, even if you go to bed so that you don’t get up until death.”

“A number of scientists think otherwise, including Theophrastus. Let him inappropriately teach - what is it to me, right? If you want to keep the house in order, So he teaches - do not rush to marry, for this even the servants are good. Before a faithful servant, what is a wife? After all, she takes half the good for herself. And if, having fallen ill, you suddenly lie down, you will find a share with your friends and servants rather than with your wife: your goodness is dearest to her.

Chaucer deliberately contrasts a man with a woman in marriage, and in favor of the latter. Melnik's story literally sounds like an apotheosis to a woman:

“The wife, on the contrary, - believe me, - Enters the house for a long time, for a longer period than you, perhaps, could wish. Marriage is a great sacrament, and the one who is not married lives helplessly, And all his hopes are fleeting (I'm talking about men, of course). And why? Yes, because it was pleasing to God to create a woman to help Us. When Adam was molded from clay by him, the creator himself, Seeing how naked and lonely he was, could not help but feel sorry for him in his soul And gave him support in the form of Eve. From here it is clear, - you all will agree, - that a woman is given to our joy and to help; She is an earthly paradise With her soul, affectionate and tender. Life with her is a boundless ocean of happiness. Having become one flesh, the wife and husband are sealed by the union of souls to the grave. Wife! Is it possible that trouble befalls someone who is married? No never. I swear by you, O Holy Virgin! Between spouses - love is such that it can not be expressed in any way. Your wife is a giver of blessings And a disinterested mistress of the house; she is unfamiliar with self-will, Always humble gives an answer; You said yes, she won't say no. Marriage life! You, like the garden of Eden, are full of splendor and delights; Everyone gives you such an honor that everyone in whom there is at least a drop of sense, Until the grave, if he is married, should thank the creator all the days in a row. And if he is single, then pray to God to send his wife to help him. Having entered into marriage, he will protect himself from all deceit and insults. Whoever follows a woman in her path, He can boldly carry his head, - Her advice is so full of wisdom. If you want to succeed in this life, Do not forget to listen to the words of your wife. After all, his mother advised Jacob that he should come to Isaac in a goat's skin to bow, - And his father gave him a blessing. Judith's mind saved the chosen people from extermination, when the tyrant's head was blown off her shoulders by her fearless sword. Navala's life hung in the balance, and yet her wife managed to save her with Her mind. Esther was saved from adversity by God's chosen people, For which the dignitary of Ahasuerus, Mordecai, bowed before her. Seneca says: in the whole universe there is no being more valuable than a humble wife. Kato tells his wife to be obedient. Submit to her - then she will doubly show her humility before you. The wife manages our household wisely. A wife who is especially ill, so that the house does not fall into decay, is needed. What a church is to Christ, let your wife be to you. Loving wisdom, consider your wife as the highest of blessings. After all, no one is an enemy to your own flesh, Therefore, cherish your wife: you can doom bliss only with her. Husband and wife - I'm not kidding at all - calmly go through life, the Union is not afraid of their threats, especially from the wife.

He who has gone through many schools is learned immensely. Contact your wife - and you will say: this is true.

Despite such a long quoted passage, this was done in order to make it clear that Chaucer still looks at a woman from a purely male point of view.

“And the girl in your hands is like wax: her heart and brain are fresh. So know in advance, friends: I will not lead the old woman to the crown. After all, if the ill-fated fate had made it so that I could not enjoy it with her, On the side I would begin to seek pleasure and thereby doom myself forever to hell, Yes, and this marriage would be childless. And I prefer to be a pack of dogs Torn apart, than for strangers to get what I myself have accumulated.

In turn, the tipsy miller, who is very far from “high” matters, tells the story of how a cunning schoolboy cuckolded a rustic carpenter who, despite his advanced age, risked marrying a young beauty. Miller's story goes like this: there lived a carpenter in Oxford. He was a master of all trades and had a well-deserved reputation as a craftsman. He was rich and allowed freeloaders into his house. Among them lived a poor student who was well versed in alchemy, remembered theorems and often surprised everyone with his knowledge. For his kind disposition and friendliness, everyone called him Dushka Nicholas. The carpenter's wife died, and he, grieving, married again to the young black-browed beauty Alison. In The Miller's Tale, Chaucer gives a charming, earthy, far from the world of pure idealism description of Alison:

“She was slim, flexible, beautiful,

lively, like a squirrel, and like a loach, playful ...

Her eyes shone with living fire;

so that the eyebrows of the eyes arch around,

She plucked her hair

and behold, like strings, they are narrow

And they became cool. She was so elegant

which was a joy to look at.

Tender as fluff, transparent in the light,

For connoisseurs, she was a delicious piece,

Could easily outshine the baron's daughters,

A bed of shame to share with the lord,

could she be an exemplary wife

Some yeoman who

she would have been her age." (Translated by Kashin).

Those. she was so attractive and sweet that there were no number of people in love with her, and among them was the student darling Nicholas. Suspecting nothing, the old carpenter was still very jealous and looked after his young wife. The retelling of this story is beyond the scope of the work, but in general terms it turns out that a clever schoolboy manages to deceive an old carpenter and cuckold him with his young wife.

Chaucer continues:

“I don't talk like an empty fool;

I know why I'm getting married

And I also know that there are many people

marriage is often judged at random,

No more understanding of it than my servant.

To whom the reward of heaven is dear,

And chastity is unbearable, let him marry,

so that with a beloved woman

To produce children for the glory of God,

and not for carnal pleasures alone.

You have to use them in moderation

just to do your duty.

Then they take their spouse,

to help, like brother and sister, to each other

And keep the law clean with her.

Thus, here we see the recognition of the need for marriage and the development of ideal role functions for man and woman.

The variability was also manifested in the declared distribution of the role functions of a woman and a man in marriage, as well as in their direct relationship. The position of a woman was determined based on her essential characteristics. On the one hand, female nature is weak and sinful. It followed from this that a woman, as the main culprit of original sin, in real life had to completely obey the will of her husband. On the other hand, the recognition of the equality of women and men before God.

So, in the "Canterbury Tales" there is variability in the perception of marital relations. On the one hand, marriage is a sin, on the other, salvation. On the one hand, marital relations are subjected to caustic ridicule, on the other hand, love and tenderness (and especially fidelity) between a man and a woman are sung.

Chapter 3

It is no coincidence that in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, it is the urban family that becomes the main subject of study. It should be noted that Chaucer's researchers, when studying the medieval British family, focused on a general analysis of the family and marriage sphere, the study of its regional and social specifics. In addition, in the field of view of scientists were, first of all, noble, as well as peasant families. As a rule, the urban family was considered in the Canterbury Tales (and in the stories of that time in general) in the context of the socio-cultural life of the city as a whole and did not act as an independent object. However, the diversity of urban lifestyles, social mobility, the level of economic and cultural development, and receptivity to the new create a unique opportunity for research in the field of matrimonial relations.

"The Canterbury Tales" allows you to expand your understanding of the family people of medieval Britain, making it possible to see them in volume, to discern the diversity and variability of relationships, behavior, and perception. In this way, it is possible to achieve a concretization of ideas about the characteristics of the people of the studied era. Interest in the Canterbury Tales family with modern needs for self-realization and self-determination in society.

In The Canterbury Tales, a love story does not always end happily, not because of a combination of circumstances, but because love can be illegal or even immoral. There is in this some hint of the future emergence of Puritanism. In Chaucer - family values ​​are considered in the whole complex. Thus, the entire work of Chaucer can be characterized as having a social character.

In The Canterbury Tales, attempts are everywhere to find out: what is happening, why, how to live in family life, which path to choose, which is also a distinctive feature of the English worldview of the 14th century.

Chaucer took people as he saw them. He believed in their healthy earthly instincts, in their right to happiness, although he did not indicate the ways in which humanity could come to the realm of joy. But he believed that joy is the natural lot of man. First of all, it is in family life that Chaucer is ready to look for the source of human happiness.

Conclusion

chaucer novella love family

Chaucer's speech, so decisive and promising, still did not lead to a rapid flowering of British Renaissance literature. In the 15th century, the author of the Canterbury Tales had no worthy successors. The poets who, in one way or another, adjoined the Chaucerian school, were inferior to him not only in talent, but also in the ability to look at things in a new way. In British literature of the 15th century. the sprouts of the Renaissance were weak and sparse. Basically, it continued to be medieval.

Chaucer was not a supporter of the "emancipation" of women, but the fact that for him the topic of love and family relationships is burning is undeniable. The "Marriage Group" in The Canterbury Tales testifies to this. In relation to the “new” position of a woman, to her “recognition as a human being” and even access to a dominant position in family life, Chaucer is more of an observer, he states these facts, but his mentality does not make it possible to unambiguously and unconditionally accept these realities.

Chaucer was a skilled storyteller. In his book, a British novel was born. In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, everything is surprisingly specific and typical: people, environment, objects, and situations. It becomes clear why A.M. Gorky called Chaucer "the founder of realism."

List of used literature

1.Chaucer G. The Canterbury tales. P.166.

2.Brewer D. A New Introduction to Chaucer Longman 1998. P. 366.

.Chaucer G. The Canterbury tales. P. 228.

.Chaucer G. The Canterbury tales. P. 386.

.Brewer D. A New Introduction to Chaucer. Longman 1998. P. 338.

6.All the masterpieces of world literature in brief. Plots and characters. Foreign Literature of Ancient Epochs, Middle Ages and Renaissance: Encyclopedic Edition. M. 1997.

.Features of the spiritual life of England in the second half of the XIV century. (based on the work of J. Chaucer "The Canterbury Tales") // Collection of materials of the VII-th Intern. scientific conference "Russia and the West: Dialogue of Cultures". Issue. 8. Vol. II. Moscow, Moscow State University, 2000.

.Ideas about marriage and the relationship of spouses in the XIV century. in England based on the work of J. Chaucer "The Canterbury Tales" // Vestnik Mosk. university Ser. 19. Linguistics and intercultural communication. Issue. 3. M., Moscow State University, 2002.

.Creation of the image of a "real person" in the General Prologue to "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer. Abstracts. // Materials of the international scientific conference of students, graduate students and young scientists "Lomonosov". Issue. 4, Moscow, Moscow State University, 2000.

35: But still, as long as there is a place and time,

37: I think it would be appropriate

38: Tell you about the situation

39: Each of them, as they seemed to me,

40: And what they were, and to what extent,

41: And about their outfits...

The story tells about the love of two cousins ​​- Palamon and Arsita - for the daughter-in-law of the Duke of Athens, Emilia. The cousins, being princes of a hostile state, are imprisoned in a dungeon by order of Theseus, from the high tower of which they accidentally see Emilia and both fall in love with her. Enmity breaks out between the cousins, and when Theseus learns of the rivalry between the two brothers, he arranges a jousting tournament, promising to give the winner Emilia as his wife. By the intervention of the gods, Palamon wins; Arsita dies by accident; the story ends with the wedding of Palamon and Emilia.

It should be noted that the Knight's tale is one of the longest tales presented by the Pilgrims. One gets the impression of solemnity, majesty of the narrative, since the narrator often deviates from the main action, presenting the audience with large fragments of detailed descriptions, often not related to the development of the plot itself (description of the women of Thebes, mourning the death of their husbands, description of temples, festivities, battles). Moreover, the Knight, as the story progresses, interrupts himself several times, returning to the main characters and to the main development of the plot:

“Long passages representing descriptions of temples, ceremonies, armor of warriors emphasize the pretentious luxury of knightly life. The descriptions are rich in figurativeness and metaphorical, although, as some researchers note, they are standard: "...Palamon in this fightyng were a wood leon, and as a crueel tigre was Arcite ..." ("...Palamon in this battle is like a mad lion, and like a ferocious tiger - Arsita ... "); in describing the captives, Palamon and Arsita; the author does not go beyond the standard epithets: "woful" ("poor"), "sorweful" ("sad"), "wrecched" ("unfortunate"), "pitous" ("miserable") - epithets that are repeated throughout narrations".

The central figures of the narrative (unfolding of the action) are Palamon and Arsita, but most researchers note that Duke Theseus is the central image. He is presented at the very beginning of the story as an ideal image, the embodiment of nobility, wisdom, justice and military virtues. The narrative opens with the introduction of the duke, a description of his virtues, although it would be logical to expect at the very beginning of the story the introduction of the central figures of the narrative, Palamon and Arsita. Theseus appears as a model of chivalry, an ideal figure, and then - a judge in a dispute between Arcita and Palamon. The greatness of the duke is confirmed by military victories and wealth:

Theseus is an ideal image in terms of knightly virtues: he protects those who need it, has knightly prowess in battles, is prudent in controversial matters, and is sensitive to the suffering of others. So, as we have seen, the Duke of Athens, Theseus, is presented to the reader as a model of chivalrous behavior, an ideal image, which will then act as a judge in a dispute between two brothers.

“The structure of the story is unusual for a simple narrative as a development of any plot. The symmetry of the structure of the story, the symmetry of the images, the pretentious static descriptions, the rich symbolism suggest not focusing on the search for skillfully drawn images, not on moral conclusions - all the reader's attention is focused on the aesthetic impression of the story.

At the lexical level, a large number of epithets were noted (when describing characters, temples, rituals), but the standardity, repetition of epithets does not allow us to determine the stylistic coloring of the text. To a greater extent, the stylistic coloring of the text, the lyricism of the story is presented with the help of parallel constructions, enumeration (that is, at the syntactic level).

“The images presented are more symbolic than real. The images are revealed by the structure of the story - the structure presupposes the role and position of each character in the story, his characteristics (if any), symbolism.

The story presents the reader with an augmented image of the Knight as the image of a romantic hero.

This proves the presence in this work of elements of a chivalric romance.

At the same time, Chaucer rethinks the genre tradition of the chivalric romance. The writer presents all the characters as unique individuals, approaches their description in detail; creates the ideal image of the Knight, as the embodiment of the dignity of nobility and honor; uses a large number of epithets and metaphors; especially rich in imagery of his descriptions of nature and terrain.

1.3. THE INFLUENCE OF OTHER GENRES OF MEDIEVAL LITERATURE ON THE "Canterbury Tales"

As mentioned earlier, The Canterbury Tales is an encyclopedia of poetic genres: here is a courtly story, and a household short story, and a la, and a fablio, and a fable, and a parody of knightly adventurous poetry, and didactic narrative in verse.

The stories of the monastery chaplain and the steward have a fable character. The story of the seller of indulgences echoes one of the plots used in the Italian collection Novellino and contains elements of a folk tale and a parable (the search for death and the fatal role of the gold found lead to the mutual extermination of friends).

The most vivid and original are the stories of the miller, the majordomo, the skipper, the carmelite, the bailiff of the church court, the canon's servant, which reveal closeness to the fablio and, in general, to the medieval tradition of the novelistic type.

The spirit of the fablio emanates from the story of the Bat weaver about herself. In this narrative group, there are the themes of adultery and the tricks of cheating and counter-tricking associated with it (in the stories of the miller, the majordomo and the skipper), familiar to both the fablio and the classic short story. In the story of the bailiff of the church court, the brightest characterization of a monk who extorts the gift of the church from a dying person is given, and the rude response joke of the patient is sarcastically described, rewarding the extortionist with stinking "air", which still needs to be divided among the monks. In the story of the Carmelite, another extortionist appears in the same satirical vein, "the sly one" and "the dashing fellow", "despicable bailiff, pimp, thief". At the moment when the church bailiff is trying to rob the poor old woman, and she sends him to hell in despair, the devil present at the same time takes the soul of the bailiff to hell. The story of the canon's servant deals with the popular theme of exposing the roguery of the alchemists.

Thus, we have come to the conclusion that Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is a unique encyclopedia of medieval literary genres. Among them are a courtly tale, and a household short story, and a le, and a fablio, and a folk ballad, and a parody of knightly adventurous poetry, and a fable, and a didactic narrative in verse.

2. REALISM J. CHAUCERA AND THE GENRE SPECIFICITY OF HIS WORKS

“The essence and foundation of the book is its realism. It includes portraits of people, their assessment, their views on art, their behavior - in a word, a living picture of life.

It was not for nothing that Gorky called Chaucer the “father of realism”: the rich painting of portraits of his contemporaries in his poetic “Canterbury Tales” and even more their general concept, such a clear clash of old feudal England and new England of merchants and adventurers, testify to Chaucer’s belonging to the literature of the Renaissance.

“But the category of realism is a complex phenomenon that has not yet received an unambiguous definition in the scientific literature. During the discussion in 1957, several points of view on realism emerged. According to one of them, realism, understood as plausibility, fidelity to reality, can be found already in the earliest monuments of art. From another point of view, realism as an artistic method of cognition of reality arises only at a certain stage in the history of mankind. Regarding the time of its origin, there is no complete unity among the supporters of this concept. Some believe that the conditions for the emergence of realism develop only in the 19th century, when literature turns to the study of social reality. Others associate the genesis of realistic art with the Renaissance, believing that at this time writers begin to analyze the influence of society and history on a person.

Both of these statements are correct to a certain extent. Indeed, realism as an artistic method was fully developed only in the 19th century, when a direction known as critical realism emerged in European literature. However, like any phenomenon in nature and society, realism arose “not immediately, not in finished form, but with a certain gradualness, going through a more or less long process of formation, formation, maturation” [cit. according to 8, 50]. It is therefore natural that certain elements, certain aspects of the realistic method are also found in the literature of earlier eras. From this point of view, we will try to find out what elements of the realistic method appear in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. As you know, one of the most important principles of realism is the reproduction of life in the forms of life itself. This formula, however, does not imply realism or plausibility in the modern sense of the word, which is mandatory for works of all historical periods. As Acad. N. I. Kondrad: “The concept of “reality” carried a different content for writers of different centuries. “The love potion in Tristan and Isolde is not at all “mysticism”, but simply a product of the pharmacology of that time. . .»» .

The idea of ​​reality, which found its expression in the Canterbury Tales, was largely based on medieval ideas. Thus, "reality" in the late Middle Ages included astrological representations. Chaucer took them quite seriously. This is evidenced by the fact that in the Canterbury Tales, characters and situations are often determined by the position of the stars and heavenly bodies. An example is The Knight's Tale. Astrology in Chaucer's time combined medieval prejudices and scientific astronomical knowledge. The writer's interest in them is manifested in the prose treatise "On the Astrolabe", in which he explains to a certain "little Lewis" how to use this ancient astronomical instrument.

Medieval philosophy often declared real not only objects surrounding a person, but also angels, and even human souls. The influence of these ideas can also be seen in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. His view of the world includes Christian miracles, which are narrated in the "Abbess's Tale" and in "The Lawyer's Tale", and the fantasy of the Breton le, which appears in "The Tale of the Weaver from Bath", and the idea of ​​​​Christian longsuffering - in "The Oxford Student's Tale" . All these representations were organic for medieval consciousness. Chaucer does not question their value, as evidenced by the inclusion of such motifs in The Canterbury Tales. For Chaucer, as a writer of the earliest stage of the English Renaissance, it is not a denial of medieval ideals that is characteristic, but a somewhat ironic attitude towards them. This is manifested, for example, in the Oxford Student's Tale, which details the story of the patient Griselda, popular at that time. The daughter of a poor peasant, she becomes the wife of a large feudal lord, who demands unconditional obedience from her. Wanting to test Griselda, her husband and master orders the children to be taken away from her and fakes their murder. Then he deprives Griselda of all property and even clothes, expels her from the palace and announces his decision to marry again a young and noble girl. Griselda meekly fulfills all the orders of her husband. Since obedience is one of the basic Christian virtues, at the end of the story, Griselda is fully rewarded for it. The husband returns his favor to her, she again becomes the mistress of the whole neighborhood and meets with the children whom she considered killed.

Chaucer's hero conscientiously retells a well-known parable. But his final words are ironic:

It was ful hard to fynde now-a-days

In al a town Grisildis thre or two.

It would be very difficult these days

Find two or three Griseldas in the whole city.

The conclusion of the narrator-student is very revealing. It reflected the understanding of unrealism, the implausibility of ideas that were part of medieval reality.

The realistic tendencies in Chaucer's art have not fully formed, they are in the making. In relation to the literature of the XIV century. one can hardly speak of the reproduction of reality in the forms of reality itself. However, the author of The Canterbury Tales is distinguished by a completely conscious desire for a truthful depiction of life. Confirmation can be the words that the writer puts into the mouth of a pilgrim named Chaucer. In the "prologue to The Miller's Tale," he expresses his fear that not all storytellers will follow the rules of a good thane in their stories. "Apologizing for the obscenity that occurs in some stories, Chaucer the Pilgrim says:

I moot reherce

H tales alle, be they bettre or

Or elles falsen son of my mateere.

I have to convey

All their stories, be they good or

Or fake a part of mine

works".

The poet strives to reproduce these stories in a form that is as close as possible to the one in which they were allegedly told during the pilgrimage. The Canterbury Tales reveals, albeit in a rudimentary form, a creative attitude towards a realistic reproduction of life.

Domestic literary critics, regardless of whether they recognize realism in the literature that preceded the 19th century, believe that identifying features of realism in the works of different eras contributes to a correct understanding of continuity in the development of artistic creativity. So, R. M. Samarin, speaking about the realism of the Renaissance, notes its close connection with the fruitful traditions of medieval art.

Chaucer's work belongs to a complex and transitional historical period, uniting contradictory trends: the originality of the Canterbury Tales largely stems from the fact that the writer continues medieval traditions, interpreting them in a new way. This is manifested, for example, in the ways of characterizing the characters. The artistic method of realism involves the depiction of typical characters in typical circumstances. The French researcher J. Bedier, analyzing the fablio, one of the main genres of medieval literature, noted that typification was still weak in it. He probably meant typification, as it was understood in the 19th century.

The character of the hero of that time was determined by his position on the hierarchical ladder, however, since antiquity, in scientific treatises and their popular transcriptions, there have been ideas about the influence of external circumstances on a person’s character. Of course, the circumstances were often understood in a metaphysical, and even in an astrological spirit. In Chaucer's era, fiction also began to look for the causes of certain features of the human personality, not just in the position of a person within the feudal hierarchy, but in himself and in external circumstances. Attempts by writers of the late Middle Ages to penetrate the secrets of human psychology were based on the teaching of temperaments dating back to Hippocrates, according to which all people were divided into choleric, melancholic, sanguine and phlegmatic. Each type of temperament corresponded to certain character traits. Chaucer was probably familiar with this doctrine, since its influence is felt, for example, in the portrait of the majordomo. The words and actions of the hero confirm this characteristic.

One of the most important factors that shape the character of a person, in the time of Chaucer, was considered astrology. According to astrological concepts, the star under which a person was born affects his character. Thus, the weaver from Bath claims that her abundance of love was predetermined by Venus, and her warlike spirit was predetermined by Mars. Both of these planets were in the sky at the hour of her birth.

In some cases, Chaucer shows the influence of social circumstances on the character of his hero. In this regard, the image of the miller Simkin from the Majordomo's Tale is very curious. The dishonesty of millers was a well-known fact, so it is no coincidence that in Chaucer's time there was a riddle: "Who is the most courageous in the world?" - "The miller's shirt, because she hugs a swindler every day." Depicting his hero as a thief, the writer follows medieval ideas about the people of his profession. However, Chaucer is not limited to class and professional characteristics. Simkin is a representative of the wealthy strata of the third estate, so there are many features in his image that are due precisely to this circumstance. He is a man with a pronounced sense of dignity, comically turning into swagger. But he has no traditional reasons for pride: he is not of noble origin, he did not accomplish great feats of chivalry. The basis of the miller's independence is his wealth, created by himself through deceit and theft. In the person of Simkin, in The Canterbury Tales, an attempt is made to show a socially conditioned character.

One of the main features of realistic art is the ability to reveal the typical in the individual and through the individual. Since such a technique was unknown in medieval literature, the writers of that time usually limited themselves to a brief typical description, for example, in a fablio. In contrast, Chaucer gives his characters individualized features. The individualization of images in the Canterbury Tales is due to certain processes that took place in the society and ideology of the 14th century. The early Middle Ages, according to D.S. Likhachev, “does not know someone else’s consciousness, someone else’s psychology, someone else’s ideas as an object of an objective image,” because at that time the individual had not yet separated from the collective (estate, caste, corporation, workshop). However, in the time of Chaucer, in connection with the growth of entrepreneurship and private initiative, the role of the individual in the life of society increases, which serves as the basis for the emergence of individualistic ideas and trends in the field of ideology.

"In the XIV century. the problem of the individual sounds in literature, art, philosophy, religion. P. Mrozkowski connects the tendency towards individualization with the ideas of scotism, which "emphasized the beauty of each given individual object." The founder of this philosophical and theological movement was Dune Scot (1266-1308). In the famous dispute between medieval realists and nominalists, he took the position of a moderate nominalist. According to J. Morse, in the teachings of Okot, two points are of the greatest value: the idea of ​​the primacy of the will over the mind and the idea of ​​the uniqueness of the individual. For us, the second position is more important, which is connected with the dispute about the reality of abstract concepts. According to Duns Scotus, the phenomena denoted by these concepts really exist: after all, humanity consists of individuals. The possibility of combining them into one is due to the fact that the difference between individuals is not generic, but formal. All human souls belong to the same genus, they have a common nature, so in the aggregate they can be called humanity. But each soul has an individual form. “The very existence of a separate soul,” writes, analyzing the views of Duns Scotus, J. Morse, “consists in its uniqueness. The soul has not only quidditas ("whatness", spirituality), but also haecceitas ("thisness", ...individuality) ... It is not only "soul", but "this soul"; likewise, the body has not only corporeality, but also individuality. Man is not just a human being, he is a human being, and this quality determines his belonging to humanity.

In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses various modes of individualization. He emphasizes the features of the appearance and behavior of the participants in the pilgrimage: a wart on the nose of the miller, the forked beard of the merchant, the motto on the brooch of the abbess. Often the writer resorts to characterization by deed. In this regard, the image of the carpenter John is indicative. In The Miller's Tale there is no author's description of this hero, all the traits of his character appear as the action develops. The carpenter's kindness is revealed by Chaucer in the following episode: he himself goes to visit Nicholas when he feigns despair over the supposedly expected flood. Chaucer makes John gullible and not very smart. The reader understands this when the carpenter takes Nicholas' prediction at face value. Chaucer's hero is not selfish, he is able to take care of others. When he learns of the impending disaster, he worries not about himself, but about his young wife:

"How? well, what about the wife?

Should Alison really die?

Almost for the first time in the history of English literature, Chaucer individualizes the speech of his characters. He uses this technique to characterize students Alan and John in The Majordomo's Tale; In the speech of these scholars, a northern dialect is noticeable. According to some Western literary critics, in the time of Chaucer, northerners were considered rude and uncouth people. This fact exacerbates the resentment that Alan and John inflict on their master. They seduce his wife and daughter, whose “nobility of origin” the miller is very proud of.

The above considerations allow us to speak of the realism of The Canterbury Tales, although “its features are still of an initial, rudimentary nature, different from the nature of later and mature realism. These features are due to the close connection between the literature of the early Renaissance and medieval culture.

The realism of J. Chaucer contributed to the rethinking and reassessment of genre canons. The writer did not remain within the canons of the realistic elements of the inner and outer world. Chaucer's realism became a prerequisite for the genre synthesis, which was discussed more than once throughout the work.

In this course work, we examined the work of art by J. Chaucer "The Canterbury Tales". To a certain extent, the phenomenon of genre originality of the work was studied.

With Chaucer, the various original genres with which he operates not only coexist within the framework of one collection (this was also the case in medieval “examples”), but interact with each other, undergo a partial synthesis, in which Chaucer already partly echoes Boccaccio. Chaucer, like Boccaccio, does not have a sharp opposition between "low" and "high" plots.

The Canterbury Tales is a completely Renaissance (by type) encyclopedia of English life in the 14th century, and at the same time - an encyclopedia of the poetic genres of the time: here is a courtly story, and an everyday short story, and a le, and a fablio, and a folk ballad, and a parody on chivalric adventurous poetry, and didactic narration in verse.

In contrast to the extremely schematic representations of representatives of various social and professional groups in medieval narrative literature, Chaucer creates very vivid portraits of the social types of English medieval society (precisely social types, and not "characters", as sometimes literary scholars define Chaucer's characters). This depiction of social types is given not only within the framework of individual specific short stories, but no less in the depiction of storytellers. The social typology of pilgrims-storytellers is clearly and amusingly manifested in their speeches and disputes, in autocharacteristics, in the choice of plots for the story. And this class-professional typology is the most important specificity and peculiar charm in the Canterbury Tales. It distinguishes Chaucer not only from his medieval predecessors, but also from the majority of Renaissance novelists, in whom the universal human ancestry, on the one hand, and purely individual behavior, on the other, in principle dominate over class features.

The Canterbury Tales is one of the remarkable synthesis of medieval culture, remotely comparable in this quality even to Dante's Divine Comedy. Chaucer also has, although to a lesser extent, elements of medieval allegorism, alien to the short story as a genre. In the synthesis of the Canterbury Tales, the short stories occupy a leading place, but the synthesis itself is much wider and much more important for Chaucer. In addition, the synthesis of genres by Chaucer is not complete, there is no complete "novelization" of the legend, fable, fairy tale, elements of chivalrous narration, sermons, etc. Even novelistic "stories", especially in the introductory parts, contain verbose rhetorical arguments about various subjects. with examples from the Holy Scriptures and ancient history and literature, and these examples are not narratively developed. The autocharacteristics of the narrators and their disputes go far beyond the framework of a short story as a genre or even a collection of short stories as a special genre formation.

COURSE WORK ON THE TOPIC:

"WAYS OF CHARACTERISTICS OF HEROES INCANTERBURYSTORIES J. CHAUCERA"

Work completed

Ershova Ekaterina Vladimirovna

student of the 2nd year of the 205th group

Faculty of Philology

Scientific adviser:

Belskaya Olga Viktorovna

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 3
5
II. CLASSIFICATION OF HEROES. 10
2.1 POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE HEROES. 10
2.2 SOCIAL CLASSES. 12
CONCLUSION. 24
List of used literature. 26
Bibliography. 26

INTRODUCTION

I. Kashkin. Geoffrey Chaucer // Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales. M., 2007.
Popova M. K. Literary and philosophical origins of the "Canterbury Tales" by J. Chaucer. Voronezh, 2003.

Furnivall, "The six text edition of Canterbury Tales" (Oxford, 1868) and "Life records of Chaucer" (1875);
Koch, "Chronology of C."s writings" (1890);
Skeat, "Legend of good women" (1889);
Skeat, "S."s minor poems" (1888);
"Originals and analogues of Canterbury Tales
J. Fleury, "Guide to Chaucer" (1877), etc.

Follow the author's character description system;
Find the connection between the characters of the heroes and their stories;
Highlight possible classifications of heroes;
Group the heroes according to the classes of medieval society;
Compare depicted classes with real classes of the Middle Ages;
Analyze the specifics of medieval society.

I. THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF THE CANTERBURY STORIES.

II. CLASSIFICATION OF HEROES.

2.1 POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE HEROES.

2.2 SOCIAL CLASSES.

Aristocracy.
Upper class in medieval society. Only one percent of the population belonged to this class. They were members of royal families, nobles, knights, squires. Chaucer shows three representatives of the aristocracy: a knight, a squire, a yeoman. It is through these characters that one can learn about the life of the aristocracy of that time.

Knight. This hero is an exemplary representative of the aristocracy, because. he has all her good features: gallantry, truthfulness, honor, generosity, courtesy. He has an impressive military career. He participated in the battles that took place in different parts: Alexandria, Lithuania, Russian land, Andalusia, Layas, Satalia, Belmaria, Tremissen. And wherever the knight went, he was revered and respected. Although he was dressed in a doublet, shabby chain mail, in a holey hem, and not in fashionable aristocratic robes, his appearance suggests that he is a real knight.

Squire. He is the son of a knight and, accordingly, belongs to the class of aristocrats from birth. He is dressed in more elaborate clothes than his father. His appearance and kinship with a knight indicate his belonging to the aristocratic class.
By the efforts of skillful ladies' hands
His outfit was embroidered like a meadow,
And all sparkled with marvelous colors,
Emblems, overseas animals. 1, c.31]
Chaucer says that the squire will also soon become a knight, but it seems that the chivalry interests the young man less than his father. He is more interested in love affairs.
He was a squire and fought there,
Than he sought favors from his beloved. 1, c.31]
He also possessed all the skills that were needed by aristocratic youth.
All day he played the flute and sang,
He knew how to put together songs,
He could read, draw, write,
Fight on spears, deftly dance. 1, c.31]
That. the knight is shown gallant and courteous, while his son represents a different shade of aristocratic life - love affairs, fashion, festivities, cheerful leisure. The squire is not the kind of person who will run to fight with a terrible dragon, he will prefer to just take part in jousting tournaments for the sake of glory and honor.

Yeoman. By definition, a yeoman is a person hired by the nobles to serve them. But Chaucer describes him more as a soldier than as a servant. It focuses on his attire and weapons rather than his personality and place in society.
Yeoman was with him, in a caftan with a hood;
Behind the sash, like the outfit, green
Sticking out a bunch of long, sharp arrows,
Whose feathers the yeoman knew how to save -
And the arrow of nimble hands obeyed.
With him was his great mighty bow,
Polished like new.
There was a thick-set, shaven-headed yeoman,
Cold wind, scorched by the sun,
Forest hunting he knew the law.
A lush bracer tightened the wrist,
And on the road from military gear
There was a sword and a shield and a dagger on the side;
On the neck barely shimmered with silver,
Green bandage hidden from view,
The worn face of Saint Christopher.
A turium horn hung on a sling -
Was a forester, must have been that shooter.[ 1, p.31-32]

Clergy.
Chaucer shows the representatives of the clergy in the light in which they were perceived by the people of that time. The following heroes belong to this class: the abbess, the monk, the Carmelite, the priest, the seller of indulgences and the bailiff of the church court.

Abbess. She was the head of the monastery. Most often in the Middle Ages, this position was occupied by wealthy people from aristocratic families. The description of the abbess makes it clear that she also came from an aristocratic family. This is evident in her education.
And fluent French
Like they teach in Stratford, not funny
Parisian hurried accent. 1, c.32]
But her origin becomes more obvious after a description of her manners and habits.
She kept herself dignified at the table:
Do not choke on strong liquor,
Slightly dipping your fingers in the gravy,
He will not wipe them on his sleeve or collar.
Not a speck around her device.
She wiped her lips so often
That there was no trace of fat on the goblet.
Waiting your turn with dignity
I chose a piece without greed. [ 1, c.32]
All this gives us the opportunity to understand why Chaucer described her immediately after the representatives of the aristocracy. From her description it is clear that of all the representatives of the clergy, she is closest to the aristocracy.

Monk. He is another example of clergymen living the life of aristocrats. He was passionately fond of hunting and could not stand the monastic charters. they forbid his favorite pastime - hunting.
Cheerful disposition, he could not stand
Monastic languishing prison,
Charter of Mauritius and Benedict
And all sorts of prescripts and edicts.
But in fact, because the monk is right,
And this harsh charter is outdated:
He forbids hunting for something
And teaches us too cool:
A monk without a cell is a fish without water.[ 1, c.33]
Monastic life is boring for him and he likes ladies, kennels, revels. He does not like work, he spends all the money of the chapel as his own.
And although such monks are reproached,
But he would be an excellent abbot:
The whole district knew his stable,
His bridle jangled with buckles,
Like the bells of that chapel
The income from which he spent as his own. [ 1, c.33]
etc.................

Vladimir Sobolev

For D. Chaucer, the depiction of a human character in the Canterbury Tales as an artistic history of human life in its present and past is one of the basic principles of genre formation. In turn, the variety of characters grows out of the variety of genres included in the work. This specific relationship, as one of the characteristic features of Chaucer's method of artistic comprehension of reality, can be traced, for example, in the aspect how the genre determines the originality of the author's "I" in the work. It is the genre that determines what is very important to reveal when analyzing the artistic whole - the personality, the position of the writer, expressed in the Canterbury Tales.

It is no coincidence that it included all the genres known to the literature of the Middle Ages, “like collections of fairy tales, short stories and, in general, narratives of various types that were encountered in the East and West before this period.” But the violation of the accepted hierarchy of genres is immediately alarming and is regarded by some researchers as a "departure from the norm that presupposes a system." The example of a chivalric romance is followed by a fablio, then a didactic legend, and again a fablio. The Christian legend is interspersed with a parody of a chivalric romance and a moralizing allegory, the historical chronicle is interspersed with a folk tale, an oriental legend, lives, etc. All of them are sealed by the author's irreconcilable attitude to the traditional laws of artistic creativity, leveling both the author's individuality and the distinctive features of the works themselves. The artistic thought of the author is perceived through the genre - a cycle that acts as an intermediary between the author's work and the reader, whose task is not only to see the process of creativity, but also to understand the artistic concept of the author, where the main thing is the image, the character of a person, free from the template in any manifestation of himself. myself. Here the author's "I" arises on the basis of mastering the images, situations, themes of all previous literature and manifests itself in irony over her characters, parodying the motives and plots of her works. The correlation of one's own position with the literary tradition does not give rise to a conditional image of a "person" who leads the story, but the character of a living person with a complex inner world and a unique way of life.

Another way of genre formation, its enrichment and development is the process of genres interpenetration. At the intersection of many genres, at the interweaving of the individual and the traditional, a new genre emerges in Chaucer. There is, as it were, an internal polemic of one genre with another, parody, explosion of the genre from within, which in turn affects the further transformation of genres. Actually, The Canterbury Tales is constructed in such a way that each story is a parody either of the previous one or of the source. Using the example of Squire's story, one can consider in detail what properties of the new genre arise from the interaction of two genres of different literary trends, as well as how they affect the deepening of the meaning of the work and the character of the narrator. The originality of the story lies in the alternation of the ordinary and the extraordinary, the real and the fantastic in life, characters, thoughts of the characters.

This is achieved by the interpenetration of the properties of the genres of the urban novel, folk tale and chivalric romance. According to the story, one can judge that the Squire is not the one he claims to be, or rather, he is trying to pass off. The son of a knight, outwardly he is faithful to the ideals of his father: from his lips we hear a book story about the “good” old knightly times, when noble seigneurs, unearthly beauties and fantastic creatures personifying good or evil lived. But reading the meaning of Squire's story, we catch ourselves thinking that we are under the spell of deliberately hidden irony. The fantastic form of the story is only a shell that hides the realistic content.

Under Chaucer's pen, a fantastic plan takes on the shape of a mirage, which, when touched by a trained eye, quickly dissipates. Fantasy is a bad cliché here. We are dealing with a parody of the fantastic in the romance of chivalry: the translation of the fantastic into the realm of the real, bringing this fantastic to life. The magical items presented by the knight to Princess Kanaka only seem extraordinary at first glance. As it turns out later, the source of their miraculous power lies in the natural properties of things. Gradually, the reader begins to have associations that all these accessories are by no means new. The merits of a beautiful mirror were told at one time by the learned men Agalsen, Villion, Stagirite; the healing sword once served as a weapon for Telemachus and Achilles, etc. You are becoming more and more convinced that the story of Squire sins with artistic eclecticism of motives, details, images, storylines. In the knight of the first part of the story, one can easily recognize the Black Knight from the anonymous novel about Gowine; conversations between the princess and the eagle has a folklore source. Thus, Squire's story is a typical example of a fragment of a chivalric novel in the last years of its existence, characterized by the decline of the artistic structure and philosophical concept of the works of this genre of literature.

In addition, everything that happens to the characters is terribly frivolous. The king and his servants are so preoccupied with their own persons that they do not even think about any adventures; the knight arrived at the feast not because of Kanaka (as it should have happened in a courtly novel), but for business reasons; the signs of attention rendered by him to the sovereign do not conceal anything ambiguous in relation to his daughter.

The prosaic nature of the characters' actions is the source of the narrator's hidden irony.

Vision as a formative element of a chivalric novel is also completely excluded by the author: here the heroes’ dream is not a reason to see “something”, to move away from the present in the “charm” of dreams, but a consequence of a person’s physical condition. Cambuscan and Kanaka fall asleep .. so that "the food is better digested" and "... so that the eyes do not swell from a sleepless night."

The wounded bird begs the beauty for mercy, but she, having forgotten that freedom for any "living creature" is dearer than anything in the world, "saves" the eagle from her: she locks the captive in a luxurious golden cage.

Life is perceived by the heroes as it is - from a practical point of view, and not as it should be. In the reproduction of the outdated truths of the "golden age" of chivalry, a new look of the young generation of Chaucer, in the image of Squire, is laid down on the traditional adventurous heroism of the genre, a witty look that infects with maximalism characteristic only of cheerful natures. This is how the character of the Squire emerges, which received the final and, it would seem, unexpected touches in his story. The "sybaritic" bumpkin in the portrait sketch of the Great Prologue - in the role of a narrator, he arouses sincere sympathy for himself. But in fact, we have before us a parody of an old type of knight in the new conditions of the time, exposing the former always unattractive conventionality of an ideal hero, whose immersion in life, on the one hand, makes him smaller, on the other hand, humanly transforms him. In this “reversal” there is a controversy with the genre of a chivalrous novel, in which the departure to another, unearthly, life “humanizes” the hero.

By activating the portrait gallery of the Great Prologue, and thus making the static faces into characters, Chaucer lends a dramatic touch to The Canterbury Tales. For the first time, the American researcher of the writer G. Kittredge drew attention to this feature of the genre. Pilgrims reveal their essence not only in the stories and characteristics of the author. Best of all, they manifest themselves in dynamic disputes - dialogues, in squabbles saturated with dramatic content, whole discussions, observations of each other.

Hence the objectivity of the characteristics of the characters proposed by Chaucer. Self-characteristics and their feedback about each other most often correspond to the characters' characters. The author makes fun of the Monk, revealing his moral buffoonery; The miller attacks the Manager, and he attacks the Miller, and the most unpleasant traits in the characters of the companions are revealed; insulting the Cook in obscene terms, the Economy does not portray himself in the best possible way. In this case, nothing contradicts psychological plausibility.

But there are cases that contradict it. Negative and positive heroes highly appreciate the virtues of those "whom they internally despise." The bailiff of the church court with all his passion protects and whom ... the Weaver of Bata! from the slander of Carmelite; the canon's servant initially speaks with reverence of his master - a charlatan; out of "respect" for the company, in which thieves and rogues are in the same honor as pious people, the Squire yields to the requests of the Innkeeper.

Such a discrepancy with "human nature" - the basis of the characters' character - is a conditional device, according to the American researcher G. Dempster, the comic role of a hero who reacts to circumstances. The irony lurking in relations with antipodes expresses such a state of the individual when the situation turns to the hero in accordance with his role, and he sees everything from the standpoint of this role. This property of Chaucerian comedy can also explain the fact that some of the stories offered by the characters do not correspond (in their inner meaning) to the characters of the narrators, emphasizing their new qualities: the ambition of the Bailiff, the unscrupulousness of the Canon's servant, the conformism of the Squire, etc.

In the presence of different speech layers of the Canterbury Tales, the genre features of the dramatic work also appear. It intertwines and contrasts different linguistic styles: the style of the life of a penitent sinner, the second Nun, with the patriarchal-epic style of the “pure to the point of holiness” of the Abbess; the bookish, impersonal speech of the Squire - with the figurative wisdom of Franklin; the emotionally sincere speech of the Knight - with the official-business ambitious story of the Priest; the juicy, frankly rude speech of the Bath weaver, always ready to confess her sins, sets off the cynicism of the truthful confessions of the true sinner Bailiff.

A characteristic feature of the genre of a dramatic work finds its manifestation in the peculiar correlation of the stories of the characters with their speech (for example, the pathetic story of the Monk - "truth-lover" about the falls of great people and the humiliating tone of the same Monk - the jester - the world-eater, last half). The plot completeness of most stories makes it possible to hear not just the voices of the characters, but perceive them as characters.

Summing up the above, we can speak of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as a polyphonic work, breaking out of the medieval framework of normative thinking and in this sense approaching the works of the Renaissance literature. The polyphonism of the work is supported by lyrical digressions with their variety of judgments and opinions, and the author's pronounced voice, compared with the voices of other characters, and the compositional lack of strict form of novelistic collections, and the principle of connecting various life semantic spheres, stylistic layers, entailing the transformation of genres , violation of their boundaries, the creation of new genre varieties. All this allows us to conclude that Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, against the general background of medieval literature, looks like a work that undoubtedly deserves closer attention from researchers who, until recently, considered it only a product of medieval artistic consciousness.

Keywords: Chaucer

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

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

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

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

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

The next one told the Doctor about Virginia. His daughter was beautiful. The county judge wanted to outsmart 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 out of the house. While Phoebe was not at home, her lover came to her. When the husband came home, the crow told him everything. He killed his wife, grieved, cursed the crow, she turned black and lost her wonderful voice.

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

A picture or drawing of The Canterbury Tales

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