hello welcome to this britle 10 video podcast on the Canterbury Tales today lesson one historical context for the Canterbury Tales before we begin I ask that you give the material the time and the attention that it deserves remember I reserve the right to give you a pop quiz on any homework assignment including this video podcast you may also be held responsible for this material on high value assessments such as projects essays and exams please resist the temptation to multitask and close all other programs on your computer except those that you might use for note taking as you watch and listen take notes stopping and replaying the video is necessary be prepared to apply what you've learned in this video to your understanding of the poem let's begin Jeffrey choser who wrote The Canterbury Tales is often cited as the father of English poetry if this is true and who am I to say that it's not we can explain his position of prominence by looking not only at the Poetry that he wrote which I will promise you and as you will see is excellent but also by taking a few minutes to consider the times that he lived in choser lived in the second half of the 14th century toward the end of what we now call the Middle Ages it was a time of tremendous change both in Europe generally and in Britain specifically and the Renaissance was just around the corner Cha's most famous work the Canterbury Tales is both a look back on nearly 350 years of British society and a glimpse of what was to come before we proceed I need to offer a brief disclaimer I'm not a historian and this isn't a history course what I'm about to do is to compress a whole lot of history into a very short presentation I'm skipping over a lot of important stuff and I'm characterizing some very complex historical events most of which you've already heard about in either apuro or Western Civ into cartoonishly simple terms this gross oversimplification has two purposes and two purposes only one to help you to read the Canterbury Tales with some sense of the society that cha describes and how it was changing and two how the Anglo-Saxon language made a giant leap forward toward the language that you and I speak today fair enough I sure hope so onward you will recall that in the very first video podcast on the Anglo-Saxons that the Norman conquest of 1066 ushu in the end of the Anglo-Saxon era what I didn't mention then was that the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons were actually tribal cousins both of them were Germanic tribes who came to Britain from Scandinavia William of Normandy soon to be known as William the Conqueror led the Norman invasion of Britannia in 1066 he was actually related to the anglosaxon kings that he conquered and he was spurred to action by the belief that he was entitled to the crown his aim therefore was to conquer the Anglo-Saxons not to eliminate them in December of 1066 he would name himself William the first the king of angeland within 5 years he took control of nearly all of Britannia which he would rule never without difficulty until his death in 1087 with the ascendancy of William to the throne French culture and the French language would dominate the island of britania for the next 300 years in fact the Normans would never leave the island instead merging with the Anglo-Saxons to become the English that we think of today so let's take a look at the Society of the Middle Ages broadly speaking medieval Society could be divided into three main categories known as the three Estates the aristocracy the clergy also known as the church and the peasantry over the 350e course of the Middle Ages the balance of power would shift suddenly and ever so slightly away from the aristocracy and the clergy moving towards the peasantry so let's let take a look at the aristocracy one of Williams most important initiatives was the commissioning of an inventory of British property and possessions known as the domesday book Williams people scour the cities in the countryside counting every land honer every peasant every building every chicken every cow every bushel of wheat this inventory would allow William to collect taxes the more someone owned the more money William could demand of him the entire homes day book is now online and it's a pretty fascinating read and if you were to read it the one thing that would strike you almost immediately is that anyone who owned anything of consequence had a Norman name that is to say was a member of the Norman aristocracy and virtually no one who owned anything of consequence had an Anglo-Saxon name in a mere 20 years the entire Anglo-Saxon ruling class had been eliminated replaced by an entirely new ruling class class from Normandy so it should be no surprise then to learn that with the Norman Conquest French became the language of the aristocracy it was a rough country dialect of French not the fancy stuff they spoke in Paris but it was definitely French and it was the official language of the British royal court and the official language of the British state at the same time in farmhouses and Fields across the island anglosaxon was still spoken by the rural people and the peasantry spoiler alert what happens to the French language that the aristocrats speak and the Anglo-Saxon language that the peasants speak will be the subject of our next video podcast so let's take a moment to consider a term that you already know from your history class few feudalism feudalism of course was a comprehensive hierarchical system of social political and economic relationships it claims God as its ultimate Authority which of course is a clever and effective thing to do if you just happen to be the king we won't go over the particulars of this system here but we will acknowledge now that it is a top-down system of Power with virtually no chance of Mobility between its various levels especially the lower levels the primary obligation of anyone in the middle levels anyone who is not a surf was military the Knight was the symbol of the feudal system and the idea of loyalty was Central to an entire series of social behaviors and codes to break any of these codes was to risk the welfare not only of oneself but that of the entire system as a whole if you're detecting The Not So subtle whiff of Comitatus here don't be surprised the dramatic con concept of katus was the blueprint for the feudal system of the Middle Ages like so many other things in England during the Middle Ages feudalism was an import from France introduced by William immediately after the Norman Conquest feudalism held sway for several centuries but would slowly begin to erode over time as ordinary people gained greater control over their lives let's talk about the role of women in medieval England under the feudal system one important aspect of aristocratic conduct was the chal code the shal code demanded loyalty to one's Lord and determine behavior on the battlefield but it also elevated women to an ideal an image of perfection that was impossible to achieve at the heart of the shivala code was the idea of courtly love which held that a knight acts most bravely and most honorably when he does so in the name of a lady courtly love is the subject of hundreds of medieval stories perhaps most famous of these are the aoran romances detailing the exploits of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table since the idea of courtly love probably came from a Christian cult that worshiped Jesus's mother the Virgin Mary there was one Teensy weeny little catch to this whole thing the relationship between the Knight and the lady had to be nonsexual a knight could wear his lady's colors on the battlefield he could glor glorify her in poetry he could draw inspiration from her in a hundred different ways but if he violated her Purity with physical love the whole social fabric unravels this is precisely what happens in the story of the Knights of the Round Table when Lancelot and Gwen get a little too close and it destroys the entire social system that they represent the reality for women in the Middle Ages differed considerably from the stuff of Legend and lore Aristocrat surf if you were a woman your place in society was rather narrowly defined your first and primary Duty was not to maintain your virginity forever but to fulfill the demands of reproduction once you were sexually mature enough to do so peasant women were childbearers first and foremost with the duties of the house and the field a close second aristocratic women too were expected to produce lots and lots of children and while they would oversee the house rather than clean it for themselves They too had no real place outside of these roles in all cases women depended heavily on their spouses for Support also looming large in the Middle Ages were the Crusades European Christianity's three and a half centuries long series of Holy Wars against Muslims will begin shortly after the Norman conquest and end in the decades after Cher's death in the year 1400 ultimately the quest to take Jerusalem was unsuccessful but the effect that the Crusades had on life at home would be immense let's take a look at that now as Europeans went East they made contact with Arabic cultures establishing trade and bringing back both consumer goods and new forms of knowledge these helped cities such as London to grow thus offering an alternative to the feudal system one major source of urban growth was trade as soldiers and Traders returned from Eastern lands with a wide array of consumer goods teas and spices and fabrics and Foods a new and important group of people emerges the merchant class with each passing decade the merchant class's economic and social power grows and they become highly influential members of society during the Middle Ages large grp groups of Craftsmen and Merchants often grouped together to form guilds a guild is an association of people of a similar occupation who join together because they share a common interest or a goal in addition contact with the Middle East led to the acquisition of new forms of knowledge especially in the Sciences mathematics and architecture as a result European cities became centers of learning in the 13th century London saw the founding of two universities Oxford and Cambridge they offered a challenge to the traditional European institutions of learning the Christian monasteries and speaking of monasteries things were changing within the church as well by now you all know about the murder of St Thomas AB Becket the Norman who had risen to great power as both prime minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury under King Henry II Thomas was an independent and combative sort of fellow and this in conjunction with his loyalty to the pope distressed Henry quite a bit bit Henry may or may not have uttered those Infamous words will no one rid me of this metalsome priest and even if he did he may or may not have been serious whatever the facts two things are certain the assassination of Thomas in the Cathedral of Canterbury generated an immense amount of Sympathy for the church giving it a renewed cultural power and this power in turn allowed its members to take unprecedented Liberties leading to corruption at every level of the church the Middle Ages also saw the creation of a document that would eventually create a more Equitable and Democratic Society the Magna Carta was signed by John of rimed in 1215 and while it is true that it was designed to protect the interests of the aristocracy it became the basis for English constitutional law and the development of the British legal system in its broadening to establish the rights of all Britains The magn Carter ensured the right to a trial by jury and a legislative system of Taxation and it it was an important step in the dissolution of feudal society it also led to the creation of a legal profession by the middle of the 14th century by the time that choser wrote The Canterbury Tales lawyers were a regular feature on the social landscape in addition to the growth of cities and the broadening of rights to all citizens another blow to feudalism was the black plague of 1348 Cher lived through the plague as a child and the outbreak killed between 30 and 50% of Britain's population this caused a massive labor shortage that gave the working people considerable leverage over their overlords and eventually led to the emancipation of the Surfs deprived of its nearly Free Labor power the feudal system was weakened considerably as the 14th century came to a close these were not the only small D Democratic developments as the Middle Ages came to an end the 100 Years War which actually lasted 116 years but who's counting may have been militarily unsuccessful but because it was fought against the French it gave Britains a sense of national identity allowing them to think of themselves as something more than Anglo Norman the symbol of this new national identity was the yman who with his long bow and his arrows formed the nucleus of the English army during the 100 Years War the yman was an independent small landowning farmer whose yard long arrows could fly over castle walls and even Pierce armor clad in green and ever ready to defend his own interests rather than those of his God or his King he replaced the knight in the National imagination as the symbol of English military might with the Yen the feudal system finally faded away and an increasingly Democratic England lay ahead that concludes this video podcast on choser and the historical context of the Canterbury Tales in our next podcast we'll introduce the poem itself and look at the language in which it was written take care until then