The General Prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is one of the jewels in the crown of medieval English literature. From its opening lines extolling the virtues of April showers through to Chaucer’s wonderfully descriptive introductions to the various pilgrims travelling from London to Canterbury, the General Prologue provides […]
Selected by Dr Oliver Tearle Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400) is the most famous English writer of the Middle Ages. Although he was by no means the only celebrated poet of his time – we should mention William Langland, the Gawain poet, and John Gower, just for starters – Chaucer is […]
By Dr Oliver Tearle ‘The Miller’s Tale’ is one of the most technically accomplished, and perhaps the funniest, of Geoffrey Chaucer’s completed Canterbury Tales. An example of a French literary form known as the fabliau, ‘The Miller’s Tale’ appears to have been Chaucer’s invention (many of the other tales told […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle examines the lyrics of a famous medieval English king ‘Richard the Lionheart’, or Coeur du Lion, has gone down in popular consciousness as one of England’s greatest and noblest kings. His statue stands outside the Houses of Parliament in […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle discusses a little-known medieval poem Here’s a question for you. Which single English text provides the Oxford English Dictionary with the most new words? By ‘new’ words I mean words which were unknown before they appeared in that particular […]