Essays on The Decameron

The Canterbury tales is a collection of stories which were written in the Middle English at the end of the 14th Century by Geoffrey Chaucer. Most of the tales are in verses though some of them are also in prose form. The Canterbury stories were part of the story telling contest by a small group of pilgrims who travelled together on a journey from Southwark to Saint Thomas Becket where their shrine was located. Chaucer used the tales and the descriptions of his characters to paint a very critical and ironic paint of the English Community at the time in particular the church ...

Became Integrated

The Eurasian landmass has witnessed the spread of such major religions as Christianity and Islam. It is also where knowledge of philosophy, science and technology originated, shaping Western culture and thought. This cultural melting pot flourished because the peoples of the Eurasian landmass have been linked along cultural, religious and political lines for centuries; trade and war among other factors, stimulated the sharing of social experiences and improvements in technology and agriculture. The purpose of this essay is to explain how the integration of Eurasia came about between 1000 and 1600 CE up to eventual integration of the Americas ...

Research paper

Exploring identity of national cultures and their interaction has recently attracted the interest of scientists in various fields. Although the study of the features of different cultures is very high , however the impact and breaking borrowed national and cultural realities (such as literary works of art ) on a national- cultural soil can not attract special attention of the researcher. Possibility or impossibility of transferring foreign cultural ideas and its embodiment in a different region with its own, unique to this region national features , remains very challenging and interesting problem. The present study was to review and comparative characterization of " The ...

Discuss the fourteenth century as a period of transition from the medieval to early modern culture (Renaissance). Include historical events, literature, and art.

Introduction:

The 14th century was an extremely important phase in the history of art and culture since it brought about major historical changes both in the way society changed but also in the way which art was perceived and how this was distributed amongst the population in general. Several events also affected the development of the general population but most notably one has to list The Black Death, the Hundred Years War as well as the decline of ...

Both the Early and High Middle Ages ended with severe crises, such as the very destructive invasions of the Northmen (Vikings) in the 800s and 900s and the Black Death and peasant revolts of the 14th Century. Throughout the Middle Ages, kings and emperors struggled to establish order and stability in the face on constant clashes between various factions of robber barons, bandits, raiders and rival feudal overlords, such as the wars fought by King Louis the Fat for decades in the region around Paris. Feudalism was thus characterized by the lack of a centralized state and the political and ...

Similarities: All of these three personalities are Italian nationals and famous poets of the middle ages. They are together called “the three fountains” and also “the three crowns”. All of them wrote poems on love due to falling in love with a lady of their time. Dante fell in love with Beatrice, Petrarch with Laura and Boccaccio with Catherine of Valois-Courtenay.

Differences: All of them had different family backgrounds. Dante is presumed to study at home in the early age however Petrarch studied law and Boccaccio got his early education from Mazzuoli who taught him about the work of Dante.

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What is love? Explain Chaucer? s attitude toward love. Although we have read only a few of his works so far, we have read several substantial pieces, enough to take a stab at this important and that you may now tackle this central and recurring theme in Chaucer’ s works. You’ll want to look at The Parlement of Foules, of course, and compare it to the treatment of love in The Canterbury Tales we have read so far, bearing in mind Chaucer’ s love for irony (which may appear in any of his works) and the possible interference that Chaucer’ ...

Analysis - Giovanni Boccaccio, "The Onset of the Black Death"

Boccaccio's Decameron is a masterpiece of early 14th century European literature; its bawdiness and its sheer wit are a wonderful, funny indicator of what life was like in 14th century Italy. However, the central framing device of the book itself - the Black Plague, which ravaged Europe around the time of the book's setting and publication - plays a somber but vital role in this important work. The importance of the plague to the story is no less evident than in the introduction, which demonstrates the awesome power of the sickness. Boccaccio's account of the plague during the time it hit Florence ...

One of the more fascinating traits of humanity is the tendency to reflect, and to create art on the basis of that reflection. Even in the days before writing, cave paintings and the oral tradition of storytelling demonstrated the ways that people expressed their feelings – taking the time after winning, even if only briefly, the struggle against the demands of subsistence to leave a product behind, for posterity. Even the earliest recorded examples of literature, such as The Epic of Gilgamesh, poignantly express the struggles that humanity faced when dealing with such abstractions as mortality and grief. Even the most ...

Chaucer’s attitude to the Church was ambivalent: it depended on the individual employed by the church. For example, in The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, he displays enormous admiration for the piety and Christian lifestyle of the poor Parson who will do anything for his parishioners. This character is an exception, however. In his portraits of the Monk, the Prioress and the Friar, Chaucer mocks them for their failure to lead a Christian lifestyle, fitting to their role in society. The monk is harmless enough, but is more interested in hunting than in doing God’s work; the ...