 friends welcome to my channel and welcome to yet another video in the history of British literature series that we have started recently till now we have covered 2 videos in this series the first video was about old English literature and the second video was about first part of the middle English literature so I have already told you that middle English period is divided in 3 parts before Chaucer, age of Chaucer and after Chaucer or age of revival in this video I am going to look at the second part which is age of Chaucer now in the previous video there were lot of writers which I was not able to cover because of the time crunch there were writers like Pearl Poet and there was so many amazing works like Owl and Nightingale, Sir Gawain and Green Knight all these works you can study in detail in our online course but in this video I would try to talk as much as I can about Joffrey Chaucer I have already made a detailed video on Joffrey Chaucer the link is given in the i button there so make sure you refer to that video for in-depth analysis of Canterbury Tales. Canterbury Tales is such a huge topic that in my online course I deliver one and half hours lecture just on Canterbury Tales because it is so important from net point of view I would not be able to cover that much in this video but I would give you a brief about the age of Chaucer and would also look at Chaucer's biography to a certain extent before we discuss the main writer Joffrey Chaucer it is important to look at the historical milestones or historical events that happened in this period the first important historical event that happened was the Hundred Years War Hundred Years War is named so because it was a war that continued for a period of hundred years there were a lot of smaller wars that happened in this period of hundred years and together they are known as Hundred Years War now this war happened between England and France we all know that England lost at the Battle of Hastings and because England always wanted to win his empire back they fought against France so a lot of war happened between both these countries but one of the most significant battle was a battle in which England won by using the Longbow method so they used Longbow in order to defeat the French army another important historical event that happened was the Black Death it was a famine that occurred thrice and in just five years killed one-third of the European population it was that bad that massive just like we have coronavirus because of which the entire world is now at stake just like that we had at one point the great black famine which was also known as black death now because of black death and Hundred Years War a lot of peasants were facing issues why because peasants were not getting enough money because of black famine a lot of them were dying plus hundred year war was happening and noble men were continuously pushing the peasants to give higher taxes so that they can fund the war now peasants were really really upset and finally they started a rebellion which was known as the peasants revolt now this peasants revolt was led by a very important person i want you guys to put in the comment section who was the main leader behind the peasants wall because it is a question which has been asked so many times in net exam and i don't want you to lose on the mark so make sure you put that in the comment section below so this was a brief about age of chaucer i tried my level best to do justice with so many important historical events and you know squeeze them in just this little video now let us look at the great writer joffrey chaucer this man was such a big impact in the field of english literature that the entire age was named after him we know this particular age from 1343 to 1400 as the age of chaucer because it was around 1343 chaucer was born we say around because we exactly don't know when he was born so it is always around 1343 now chaucer was a man who participated in the hundred years war plus he went on so many explorations around europe he traveled extensively and that is the reason why he was able to meet so many new people he was able to look at their perspective and finally he was able to pull all those experiences together in one book for which he is known and that is canterbury tales but is it just canterbury tales that he has written no there has been some fine works written by him which we are going to discuss very shortly but before that i would just like to give you a very quick information there's a movie a night's tale the movie's name is a night's tale and this movie is based on chaucer's life plus based on the night's tale that is there in canterbury tales if you have not watched it i beg of you please watch it just after you finish watching this video this is a movie that is going to give you so much information about age of chaucer that you will never be able to forget age of chaucer till your death so make sure you watch a night's tale and you also remember the fact that chaucer has traveled extensively around europe and that was the reason why he was able to write such a great collection of stories talking about different characters coming from different backgrounds now before we look at canterbury tales i would like to talk about two important works of chaucer the first one being's parliament of fowls now fowl's here stands for birds so it is basically a story where all these birds are sitting and discussing with each other the second work is troilus and chrysida troilus and chrysida is a story which was later written by shakespeare too but then the original story was retold first by chaucer and then by shakespeare so it is a very interesting story if you ever get a chance to read it please make sure you do i have discussed it in detail in my online course but because of the time crunch i'm just telling you the name so that you can go and read it yourself and finally we have canterbury tales the main work for which chaucer is known so canterbury tales as it is said to be tales it is not prose to work it is actually poetry so though he has named it as tales but don't get confused it's not prose it's poetry it's a collection of poetry in which there are different pilgrims who are coming together and going to shrine of thomas becket and while they are going they are narrating stories and when they are coming back they have to narrate one one story two but what happens is that chaucer died before he could complete the work originally he wanted to write 120 stories together there were 30 pilgrims so two stories every pilgrim is going to tell on their way to thomas bracket shrine and two on the way back from thomas becket shrine so in total four stories 30 pilgrims so calculation is 120 stories but he died before he could complete it he only wrote 24 of them now i have spoken a lot about canterbury tales in another video lecture of mine which is there in the i button so just check that video because i have told a lot of stories in that video i don't want to repeat it here because i want the video to be short crisp and sweet but before you leave i would like to tell you that chaucer was such a big man that charles the third king charles the third he gave him a gallon of wine every day just because he was so inspired and so impressed by his writing so every day chaucer used to get a gallon of wine gallon is basically a measurement thing next important fact about chaucer is that chaucer inspired a lot of other writers in the ages to come and bunch of few writers was so much inspired by chaucer that they were known as scottish chaucerians these were writers who were writing after chaucer so somewhere around 1400 to 1500 ad they were writing and they were imitating chaucer in exact form and that is the reason why we call them as kottish chaucerians so i hope i've done justice to this video trying to talk about this major writer and all the important historic details in just one little video there is a lot of other information that you must know for that you can visit our website i'm going to meet you very soon in the next video lecture till the time i meet next happy learning keep loving literature and stay tuned to arpitakarwa.com