Mystics wrote practical advice with
transcendental teaching, for instance "Scale of Perfection"
attributed to Walter Hilton and "Cloud of Unknowing". Richard
Rolle wrote about spiritual matters, probably the "Prick of
Conscience". Richard de Bury wrote "Philobiblon" about book
lovers. Jean Froissart wrote the "Chronicles" on knights. Courtly
ideals were expressed in "Sir Gawaine and the Grene Knyght",
wherein the adventures of the hero, an Arthur knight, are
allegorical in the struggle against the world, the flesh, and the
devil (1370). "Pearl" eulogized all that is pure and innocent on
the event of the death of a two year old child.
Geoffrey Chaucer was a squire and diplomat of the king. His "Tales
of the Canterbury Pilgrims" portrayed characters of every social
class, including the knight with his squire, abbot, prioress, nun,
priest, monk, friar, poor parson of the country, summoner (who
enforced the jurisdiction and levied the dues of the church
courts), pardoner (sold pardons from the pope), scholar, attorney,
doctor, merchant, sailor, franklin, yeoman, haberdasher, tapestry-
maker, ploughman, cook, weaver, dyer, upholsterer, miller, reeve,
carpenter.
There were Chaucer stories about a beautiful and virtuous wife
disliked by her mother-in-law, the difficulty of marriage between
people of different religions, the hatred of a poor person by his
brother and his neighbor, rich merchants who visited other
kingdoms, the importance of a man himself following the rules he
sets for other people's behavior, the spite of a man for a woman
who rejected him, the relative lack of enthusiasm of a wife for
sex as compared to her husband, a mother giving up her own comfort
for that of her child, the revenge killing of a murderer by the
dead man's friends, the joy of seeing a loved one after years of
separation, that life is more sad than happy, that lost money can
be retrieved, but time lost is lost forever.
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