Analysis Of The Poems From The Medieval And Renaissance Period

 In his “The Canterbury Tales,” Geoffrey Chaucer was able to put his stories into a group of pilgrims. Him doing this had created an opportunity to produce a set of character that had provide both psychological and social observations in English literature. Geoffrey Chaucer had used a pilgrimage as his frame of the poem and therefore this presents a cross section of society. The Canterbury Tales, characters bound together on a religious pilgrimage, which represent every rank of feudal society, however it excluded the royalty and the serfs. The Canterbury Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer contain 24 stories, however though some of them are not quite completed stories. They style of The Canterbury Tales is distinguished by the rhyming couplets, which allows every two lines two rhyme with one another. It also uses iambic pentameter throughout the poem. The themes of this poem is class, and religion. The tone of the poem The Canterbury Tale, it has a spectacular range of attitudes towards literature and life.

The literary elements of this tale is imagery, hyperbole, personification and irony, he also uses the literary devices of similes and metaphors. Another poem during the Medieval Period is “The Pardoner’s Tale,” the Pardoner was asked by the Host to tell a story. The other pilgrims wish to hear “something with a moral, something clever and profitable. ” The story of the Pardoner tells is story of 3 rioters who find a pile of gold under a big Oak tree. The three friends discover that one of their friends has died while looking for treasure. So they decide to find the treasure in their friend’s memory. They find the treasure, but greed takes hold of them and each of the plots to kill the each other. So the two of them plan to gang up on the other and kill him which they do so, however then they are killed by poison that the dead man had mixed into their drinks before he was killed. The Pardoner’s Tale is written in iambic pentameter in rhyming couplets, which means that every two lines rhyme. The literary elements that Geoffrey Chaucer uses is personification and foreshadowing, he also uses literary devices such as symbolism, imagery and allusion. The theme of The Pardoner’s Tale is Mortality, and that greed is the root of all evil. The Renaissance is the movement in which the leaders of thought portrayed the “complete” man, a man who is both courtly and earned. In addition there was a desire to recover and imitate the best of classical Greek and Roman writing. A new emphasis was placed on the importance of the individual. The first literary work from this period was the poem, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe. This poem is a pastoral poem, a poem that expresses peace and the simplicity of life.

The poem by Marlowe had caused other authors to write responses, and one of the responses, is “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd,” which was written by Sir Walter Raleigh. The Shepherd offers to his love all of the pleasure that are from nature, for example the Shepherd says he will make a bed out of roses and posies. And that he had a beautiful gown made from the wool of their sheep with buckles of gold, he also wants to make her a pair of slippers that are lined with wool for the cold. A belt made of straw and buds of ivy, and he offers his love silver dishes with food for him and her on a table served for them two every day. The Shepherd offers his love the simplicity of life out in the countryside in Europe by sitting on rocks listening to people sing, watching birds and enjoying the beautiful view of the countryside. This poem is romantic because the shepherd proposes all of these gifts to his love, to portray an ideal future together, he did not plan for the future and to enjoy the moments without worrying. The style of the poe