England in the Age of Chaucer

273 Pages·010.062 MB·English

by  William Woods

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ENGLAND IN

THE AGE OF

CHAUCER
|P WILLIAM WOODS

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This superbly vivid
account of life in the
fourteenth century
depicts an age of
uncertainty - an •;
England comparable
i
to our own, in which i
‘almost
-%* - I;
lAfZ? every part of
V the nation had .«r
!
■ lost confidence in *
W itself’. It was an age
of unprecedented
inflation, when
!
masses of people left
'
the countryside for
£ the city, when the
Black Death decimated the population, when
lawlessness proliferated and taxes increased 1
sharply, when the peasants rose and asserted
themselves against their masters.
•-
But the times were not entirely bleak for a
•i
i
populace not yet estranged from nature, and
William Woods evokes the rhythms of rural
life with humour and compassion. In doing so,
moreover, he gives us a statement of the
English character which, he believes, has not
fundamentally altered since Chaucer’s time. 1
A fine insight into the minds of Chaucer’s
contemporaries helps to form this mellow, >}
three-dimensional picture of the age when the
seeds of the English Renaissance were sown.
Illustrated
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Gngland in QhflUQeSR
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Already published
ENGLAND IN THE AGE OF HOGARTH by Derek Jarrett
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WilliamWoods

England in QhHUQeR

thcHgeof
BOOK CLUB ASSOCIATES
LONDON
This edition published 1976 by Book Club Associates
By arrangement with Granada Publishing Ltd
Frogmore, St Albans, Hertfordshire AL2 2NF and
3 Upper James Street, London WiR 4BP
Copyright © 1976 by William Woods
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Printed in Great Britain by
Butler & Tanner Ltd, Frome and London
:
To the memory of Professor W. F. Thrall
of Chapel Hill, who many years ago first
taught me to love Chaucer
I
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