Medieval Times Feudalism Feudalism was a set of

Medieval Times

Feudalism: � Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9 th and 15 th centuries.

Baron: � Barons rank below viscounts, and form the lowest rank in the nobility.

The manor: �A manor is an estate in land to which is incident the right to hold a court named court baron, that is to say a manorial court.

The peasants: �A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally works land owned or rented by/from a noble, but is classified socioeconomically above a squire with regards to the era.

The knihgt: �A knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages. �They were seen as the perfect romantic gentlemen.

The town � The High Middle Ages saw an explosion in population. This population flowed into towns.

The guilds: � A guild was an association of craftsmen in a particular trade. The earliest types of guild were formed as confraternities of workers.

Monasteries and pilgrims: � A monastery was a place of pilgrimage for many people. � A pilgrim is a traveller who takes a journey to a Holy Place.

Medicine: � At the beginning of the middle ages, medicine started to develop. � During the 14 th and 15 th century, with the appearance of Black death, a lot of people stop believing in medicine. They thought it was a God’s punishment.

Black Death: � The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history. Thought to have started in China, it travelled along the Silk Road and reached Europe by 1346. � More than 1/3 of the European population died because of the Black Death.

The Canterbury Tales �The plot is about a group of pilgrims on a journey to Canterbury. Each one tells a different story. �Most of the tales are written in verse, but some of them are in prose. �Chaucer himself is one of the characters in the book.

�Influence: Structurally, the collection resembles The Decameron of Boccaccio, which Chaucer may have come across during his first diplomatic mission to Italy in 1372.

Structure: �The Canterbury Tales has the same structure as the Decameron. There are two different types of background: �The meeting: When people chat. �The stories: Each person tells a different story on the way to thecathedral and on the way back