دانلود کتاب England in the Age of Chaucer

This superbly vivid account of life in the fourteenth century depicts an age of uncertainty - an England comparable to our own, in which 'almost every part of the nation had lost confidence in itself.' It was an age of unprecedented inflation, when the Black Death decimated the population, when the lawlessness proliferated and taxes increased sharply, when the peasants rose and asserted themselves against their masters. But the times were not entirely bleak for a populace not yet estranged from nature, and William Woods evokes the rythms 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. 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.