100-630: The London Gas Museum was a museum in Bromley-by-Bow in east London , England . It was situated on Twelvetrees Crescent, London E3 3JG, on the eastern side of the River Lea and near to Bromley-by-Bow tube station . The building dates from 1905 when it was part of a gas works and is still known as the London Gas Museum for post. Amongst other exhibits, it held a gas -powered radio , and an assortment of survey maps for gas companies. In 1998,
200-494: A London dialect of late Middle English , which has clear differences from Modern English. From philological research, some facts are known about the pronunciation of English during the time of Chaucer. Chaucer pronounced -e at the end of many words, so that care (except when followed by a vowel sound) was [ˈkaːrə] , not / k ɛər / as in Modern English. Other nowadays silent letters were also pronounced, so that
300-424: A community centre. It has been cited as a model for the future development of community services and health care. Bromley By Bow Community Organisation (BBBCO) provides Youth Provisions and Community Engagement programmes for the area. Its projects and services as a voluntary organisation provide the area with five football teams, a Girls Group, Youth Group and Elderly and Community Services. The Spratt's Complex
400-534: A copy of the work on hand, surmising instead that he may have merely read the Decameron at some point. Chaucer may have read the Decameron during his first diplomatic mission to Italy in 1372. Chaucer used a wide variety of sources, but some, in particular, were used frequently over several tales, among them the Bible, Classical poetry by Ovid , and the works of contemporary Italian writers Petrarch and Dante . Chaucer
500-423: A disagreement between Church and Crown. Miracle stories connected to his remains sprang up soon after his death, and the cathedral became a popular pilgrimage destination. The pilgrimage in the work ties all of the stories together and may be considered a representation of Christians' striving for heaven, despite weaknesses, disagreement, and diversity of opinion. The upper class or nobility, represented chiefly by
600-457: A field. The name Bromley-by-Bow has historic pedigree, appearing in the correspondence of Oliver Cromwell. In 1967, the name was chosen as the new name for Bromley tube station to prevent confusion with Bromley railway station in the London Borough of Bromley . Bow itself (also part of Stepney until the 18th century) was originally known as Stratforde , becoming Stratford-at-Bow when
700-509: A literary language centuries before Chaucer's time, and several of Chaucer's contemporaries— John Gower , William Langland , the Pearl Poet , and Julian of Norwich —also wrote major literary works in English. It is unclear to what extent Chaucer was seminal in this evolution of literary preference. The Canterbury Tales is generally thought to have been incomplete at the end of Chaucer's life. In
800-525: A long lapse in which the theme has not been addressed. Lastly, Chaucer does not pay much attention to the progress of the trip, to the time passing as the pilgrims travel, or to specific locations along the way to Canterbury. His writing of the story seems focused primarily on the stories being told, and not on the pilgrimage itself. The variety of Chaucer's tales shows the breadth of his skill and his familiarity with many literary forms, linguistic styles, and rhetorical devices. Medieval schools of rhetoric at
900-453: A medieval bridge was built, in the arched shape of a bow, to distinguish it from Stratford Langthorne on the other side of the River Lea. The oldest surviving written reference to the area, as Braembeleg , was from about the year 1000 when it was referred to as one of the manors belonging to St Paul's Cathedral . Bromley was home to St Leonard's Priory a Benedictine nunnery founded in
1000-589: A part of Chaucer's trip and heard the stories. He characterises himself as a monk and tells a long story about the history of Thebes before the events of the Knight's Tale . John Lydgate's tale was popular early on and exists in old manuscripts both on its own and as part of the Tales . It was first printed as early as 1561 by John Stow , and several editions for centuries after followed suit. There are actually two versions of The Plowman's Tale , both of which are influenced by
1100-552: A relatively new invention that allowed dissemination of the written word never before seen in England. Political clashes, such as the 1381 Peasants' Revolt and clashes ending in the deposing of King Richard II , further reveal the complex turmoil surrounding Chaucer in the time of the Tales' writing. Many of his close friends were executed and he himself moved to Kent to get away from events in London. While some readers look to interpret
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#17330861615691200-461: A religious or spiritual space at its conclusion, and reflect a psychological progression of the spirit, in yet another kind of emotional space. Liminality is also evident in the individual tales. An obvious instance of this is The Friar's Tale in which the yeoman devil is a liminal figure because of his transitory nature and function; it is his purpose to issue souls from their current existence to hell, an entirely different one. The Franklin's Tale
1300-516: A series of stories. In the Decameron , the characters have fled to the countryside to escape the Black Death . It ends with an apology by Boccaccio, much like Chaucer's Retraction to the Tales . A quarter of the tales in The Canterbury Tales parallel a tale in the Decameron , although most of them have closer parallels in other stories. Some scholars thus find it unlikely that Chaucer had
1400-421: A way that kept in mind the speaker, subject, audience, purpose, manner, and occasion. Chaucer moves freely between all of these styles, showing favouritism to none. He not only considers the readers of his work as an audience, but the other pilgrims within the story as well, creating a multi-layered rhetoric. With this, Chaucer avoids targeting any specific audience or social class of readers, focusing instead on
1500-494: Is a Breton Lai tale, which takes the tale into a liminal space by invoking not only the interaction of the supernatural and the mortal, but also the relation between the present and the imagined past. While Chaucer clearly states the addressees of many of his poems (the Book of the Duchess is believed to have been written for John of Gaunt on the occasion of his wife's death in 1368),
1600-563: Is a district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in East London , located on the western banks of the River Lea , in the Lower Lea Valley in East London . It is an inner-city suburb located 4.7 miles (7.5 km) east of Charing Cross . The area is distinct from Bow, which lies immediately north of the formal boundary between the two, which runs along Bow Road , or near the Lea, slightly to
1700-456: Is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's magnum opus . The tales (mostly written in verse , although some are in prose ) are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together from London to Canterbury to visit
1800-409: Is a finished work has not been answered to date. There are 84 manuscripts and four incunabula (printed before 1500) editions of the work, which is more than for any other vernacular English literary text with the exception of Prick of Conscience . This comparison should not be taken as evidence of the Tales' popularity in the century after Chaucer's death, because, according to Derek Pearsall, it
1900-447: Is a good possibility Chaucer met Petrarch or Boccaccio . The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories built around a frame tale , a common and already long established genre in this period. Chaucer's Tales differs from most other story "collections" in this genre chiefly in its intense variation. Most story collections focused on a theme, usually a religious one. Even in the Decameron , storytellers are encouraged to stick to
2000-788: Is an account of Jews murdering a deeply pious and innocent Christian boy, a blood libel against Jews that became a part of English literary tradition. The story did not originate in the works of Chaucer and was well known in the 14th century. Pilgrimage was a very prominent feature of medieval society. The ultimate pilgrimage destination was Jerusalem, but within England Canterbury was a popular destination. Pilgrims would journey to cathedrals that preserved relics of saints, believing that such relics held miraculous powers. Saint Thomas Becket , Archbishop of Canterbury, had been murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights of Henry II during
2100-507: Is an example of what a Nun was expected to be: her tale is about a woman whose chaste example brings people into the church. The Monk and the Prioress, on the other hand, while not as corrupt as the Summoner or Pardoner, fall far short of the ideal for their orders. Both are expensively dressed, show signs of lives of luxury and flirtatiousness and show a lack of spiritual depth. The Prioress's Tale
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#17330861615692200-475: Is currently seldom followed. General Prologue The Knight's Tale The Miller's Tale The Reeve's Tale The Cook's Tale An alternative ordering (seen in the early 15th-century manuscript Harley MS. 7334 ) places Fragment VIII before VI. Fragments I and II almost always follow each other, just as VI and VII, IX and X do in the oldest manuscripts. Fragments IV and V, by contrast, vary in location from manuscript to manuscript. Chaucer mainly wrote in
2300-823: Is hinted as having a corrupt relationship with the Pardoner. In The Friar's Tale , one of the characters is a summoner who is shown to be working on the side of the devil, not God. Churchmen of various kinds are represented by the Monk, the Prioress, the Nun's Priest, and the Second Nun. Monastic orders, which originated from a desire to follow an ascetic lifestyle separated from the world, had by Chaucer's time become increasingly entangled in worldly matters. Monasteries frequently controlled huge tracts of land on which they made significant sums of money, while peasants worked in their employ. The Second Nun
2400-465: Is known to have set a collection of tales within the framework of pilgrims on a pilgrimage. It is obvious, however, that Chaucer borrowed portions, sometimes very large portions, of his stories from earlier stories, and that his work was influenced by the general state of the literary world in which he lived. Storytelling was the main entertainment in England at the time, and storytelling contests had been around for hundreds of years. In 14th-century England,
2500-465: Is mentioned in the Tales , which also mention a specific incident involving pardoners (sellers of indulgences , which were believed to relieve the temporal punishment due for sins that were already forgiven in the Sacrament of Confession ) who nefariously claimed to be collecting for St. Mary Rouncesval hospital in England. The Canterbury Tales is among the first English literary works to mention paper,
2600-600: Is religious (although the prologue comments ironically on its merely seasonal attractions), making religion a significant theme of the work. Two characters, the Pardoner and the Summoner, whose roles apply the Church's secular power, are both portrayed as deeply corrupt, greedy, and abusive. Pardoners in Chaucer's day were those people from whom one bought Church "indulgences" for forgiveness of sins, who were guilty of abusing their office for their own gain. Chaucer's Pardoner openly admits
2700-428: Is the transitional or transformational space between a "real" (secure, known, limited) world and an unknown or imaginary space of both risk and possibility. The notion of a pilgrimage is itself a liminal experience, because it centres on travel between destinations and because pilgrims undertake it hoping to become more holy in the process. Thus, the structure of The Canterbury Tales itself is liminal; it not only covers
2800-416: Is unfair considering that Prick of Conscience had all the benefit of the "preservation of a dogmatic religious subject-matter". Fifty-five of these manuscripts are thought to have been originally complete, while 28 are so fragmentary that it is difficult to ascertain whether they were copied individually or as part of a set. The Tales vary in both minor and major ways from manuscript to manuscript; many of
2900-478: The Black Death , many Europeans began to question the authority of the established Church. Some turned to Lollardy, while others chose less extreme paths, starting new monastic orders or smaller movements exposing church corruption in the behaviour of the clergy, false church relics or abuse of indulgences . Several characters in the Tales are religious figures, and the very setting of the pilgrimage to Canterbury
3000-503: The Bromley-by-Bow gasholders lies just over the border in Newham. Mile End is located to the west of a historic boundary which runs through Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park and along parts of Bow Common Lane, though the small former open space which was known as Bow Common , on either side of part of that road, lay just on the other side of that boundary, wholly within Mile End. Poplar lies to
3100-542: The Cook's Tale , which Chaucer never finished, The Plowman's Tale , The Tale of Gamelyn , the Siege of Thebes , and the Tale of Beryn . The Tale of Beryn , written by an anonymous author in the 15th century, is preceded by a lengthy prologue in which the pilgrims arrive at Canterbury and their activities there are described. While the rest of the pilgrims disperse throughout the town,
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3200-650: The County of London . On the other side of the River Lea, seven Victorian gasholders are is Grade II listed and have been named by the Victorian Society as a heritage building at risk of disrepair. In 1931, Gandhi was in London for talks with the British Imperial government on the future of India -then a part of the British Empire , the only time he left India between 1914 and his death in 1948. He declined
3300-621: The E3 (in the north) and E14 (in the south) postal districts. To the north is Bow , with the historic boundary running along Bow Road , or near the River Lea , slightly to the south of the Road – with Bow's parish church just south of the road, close to the Lea, a part of Bow. Stratford , West Ham and Canning Town are eastward, across the Lea, which is the boundary between the London Boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Newham . The historic Three Mills and
3400-527: The Ellesmere Manuscript , a deluxe, illustrated manuscript. Until the 1940s, scholars tended to prefer the Ellesmere manuscript as closer to Chaucer's intentions; following John M. Manly and Edith Rickert , scholars increasingly favoured Hengwrt. The first version of The Canterbury Tales to be published in print was William Caxton 's 1476 edition. It was one of the first books to be printed by Caxton,
3500-526: The General Prologue , some 30 pilgrims are introduced. According to the Prologue, Chaucer's intention was to write four stories from the perspective of each pilgrim, two each on the way to and from their ultimate destination, St. Thomas Becket's shrine (making for a total of about 120 stories). It is revered as one of the most important works in English literature. The question of whether The Canterbury Tales
3600-520: The Lower Lea Valley include providing 8,000 new homes and 2,500 new jobs in the Bromley-by-Bow area. The section of land between the River Lea and the A11 is currently being redeveloped. Immediately adjacent to it, in Newham, is the 26 acres (11 ha) Sugar House Island development, led by Vastint. Bow School is a comprehensive secondary school and sixth form for boys and girls. In September 2014
3700-517: The fabliau scarcely notices the operations of God, the saint's life focuses on those at the expense of physical reality, tracts and sermons insist on prudential or orthodox morality, romances privilege human emotion." The sheer number of varying persons and stories renders the Tales as a set unable to arrive at any definite truth or reality. The concept of liminality figures prominently within The Canterbury Tales . A liminal space, which can be both geographical as well as metaphorical or spiritual,
3800-578: The 19th century by the London School Board for construction of a new board school. Many of the original fittings remained in place and were said to be in fine condition. The house was sold piecemeal for £250 with the Stateroom, panelling and an oak doorway going to the Victoria and Albert Museum . Bromley was also known as Bromley-St Leonards, after St Leonard's Priory a Benedictine nunnery founded in
3900-599: The English Pui was a group with an appointed leader who would judge the songs of the group. The winner received a crown and, as with the winner of The Canterbury Tales , a free dinner. It was common for pilgrims on a pilgrimage to have a chosen "master of ceremonies" to guide them and organise the journey. Harold Bloom suggests that the structure is mostly original, but inspired by the "pilgrim" figures of Dante and Virgil in The Divine Comedy . New research suggests that
4000-548: The French tale Bérinus and exists in a single early manuscript of the tales, although it was printed along with the tales in a 1721 edition by John Urry . John Lydgate wrote The Siege of Thebes in about 1420. Like the Tale of Beryn , it is preceded by a prologue in which the pilgrims arrive in Canterbury. Lydgate places himself among the pilgrims as one of them and describes how he was
4100-523: The General Prologue, in which the innkeeper and host Harry Bailey introduces each pilgrim, is a pastiche of the historical Harry Bailey's surviving 1381 poll-tax account of Southwark's inhabitants. The Canterbury Tales contains more parallels to the Decameron , by Giovanni Boccaccio , than any other work. Like the Tales , the Decameron features a frame tale in which several different narrators tell
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4200-542: The Knight and his Squire, was in Chaucer's time steeped in a culture of chivalry and courtliness. Nobles were expected to be powerful warriors who could be ruthless on the battlefield yet mannerly in the King's Court and Christian in their actions. Knights were expected to form a strong social bond with the men who fought alongside them, but an even stronger bond with a woman whom they idealised to strengthen their fighting ability. Though
4300-485: The Knight go first gives one the idea that all will tell their stories by class, with the Monk following the Knight. However, the Miller's interruption makes it clear that this structure will be abandoned in favour of a free and open exchange of stories among all classes present. General themes and points of view arise as the characters tell their tales, which are responded to by other characters in their own tales, sometimes after
4400-486: The Lea is undergoing extensive redevelopment. In 2001, according to the UK national census data, there were 11,581 people living in the ward in 2188 households, giving an average of 2.8 people per household. Of these 51% were female, 30% were under the age of 16 and 40% were of Bangladeshi origin. Tenure in Bromley-by-Bow ward was predominantly rented with only 15% of households being owner-occupiers . Census data indicates that
4500-490: The Pardoner seeks the affections of Kate the barmaid, but faces problems dealing with the man in her life and the innkeeper Harry Bailey. As the pilgrims turn back home, the Merchant restarts the storytelling with Tale of Beryn . In this tale, a young man named Beryn travels from Rome to Egypt to seek his fortune only to be cheated by other businessmen there. He is then aided by a local man in getting his revenge. The tale comes from
4600-618: The Peace and, in 1389, Clerk of the King's Works. It was during these years that Chaucer began working on The Canterbury Tales . The end of the fourteenth century was a turbulent time in English history. The Catholic Church was in the midst of the Western Schism and, although it was still the only Christian authority in Western Europe, it was the subject of heavy controversy. Lollardy , an early English religious movement led by John Wycliffe ,
4700-479: The actual reader. Chaucer's works may have been distributed in some form during his lifetime in part or in whole. Scholars speculate that manuscripts were circulated among his friends, but likely remained unknown to most people until after his death. However, the speed with which copyists strove to write complete versions of his tale in manuscript form shows that Chaucer was a famous and respected poet in his own day. The Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts are examples of
4800-406: The aim of chivalry was to noble action, its conflicting values often degenerated into violence. Church leaders frequently tried to place restrictions on jousts and tournaments, which at times ended in the death of the loser. The Knight's Tale shows how the brotherly love of two fellow knights turns into a deadly feud at the sight of a woman whom both idealise. To win her, both are willing to fight to
4900-559: The area, such as nursing training or apprenticeships. Walford , the area where the BBC soap opera EastEnders is set is based on Bromley-by-Bow. Albert Square, the main community in the show is based on Fassett Square in nearby Hackney . The CBeebies television series Apple Tree House began filming its episodes on the Devons Estate in 2017. Canterbury Tales The Canterbury Tales ( Middle English : Tales of Caunterbury )
5000-487: The care taken to distribute the work. More manuscript copies of the poem exist than for any other poem of its day except The Prick of Conscience , causing some scholars to give it the medieval equivalent of bestseller status. Even the most elegant of the illustrated manuscripts, however, is not nearly as highly decorated as the work of authors of more respectable works such as John Lydgate 's religious and historical literature. John Lydgate and Thomas Occleve were among
5100-425: The characters of The Canterbury Tales as historical figures, other readers choose to interpret its significance in less literal terms. After analysis of Chaucer's diction and historical context, his work appears to develop a critique of society during his lifetime. Within a number of his descriptions, his comments can appear complimentary in nature, but through clever language, the statements are ultimately critical of
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#17330861615695200-432: The characters of the story and writing their tales with a skill proportional to their social status and learning. However, even the lowest characters, such as the Miller, show surprising rhetorical ability, although their subject matter is more lowbrow. Vocabulary also plays an important part, as those of the higher classes refer to a woman as a "lady", while the lower classes use the word "wenche", with no exceptions. At times
5300-486: The connection is less obvious. Consequently, there are several possible orders; the one most frequently seen in modern editions follows the numbering of the Fragments (ultimately based on the Ellesmere order). Victorians frequently used the nine "Groups", which was the order used by Walter William Skeat whose edition Chaucer: Complete Works was used by Oxford University Press for most of the twentieth century, but this order
5400-415: The corruption of his practice while hawking his wares. Summoners were Church officers who brought sinners to the Church court for possible excommunication and other penalties. Corrupt summoners would write false citations and frighten people into bribing them to protect their interests. Chaucer's Summoner is portrayed as guilty of the very kinds of sins for which he is threatening to bring others to court, and
5500-504: The death. Chivalry was on the decline in Chaucer's day, and it is possible that The Knight's Tale was intended to show its flaws, although this is disputed. Chaucer himself had fought in the Hundred Years' War under Edward III , who heavily emphasised chivalry during his reign. Two tales, Sir Topas and The Tale of Melibee , are told by Chaucer himself, who is travelling with the pilgrims in his own story. Both tales seem to focus on
5600-490: The distance between London and Canterbury, but the majority of the tales refer to places entirely outside the geography of the pilgrimage. Jean Jost summarises the function of liminality in The Canterbury Tales , Both appropriately and ironically in this raucous and subversive liminal space, a ragtag assembly gather together and tell their equally unconventional tales. In this unruly place, the rules of tale telling are established, themselves to be both disordered and broken; here
5700-467: The first critics of Chaucer's Tales , praising the poet as the greatest English poet of all time and the first to show what the language was truly capable of poetically. This sentiment was universally agreed upon by later critics into the mid-15th century. Glosses included in The Canterbury Tales manuscripts of the time praised him highly for his skill with "sentence" and rhetoric, the two pillars by which medieval critics judged poetry. The most respected of
5800-602: The first person in England to print books using a printing press . Only 10 copies of this edition are known to exist, including one held by the British Library and one held by the Folger Shakespeare Library . The copyist of the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts has been identified as a scrivener named Adam Pinkhurst . Since a poem, apparently by Chaucer, identifies his scribe as a man named "Adam", this has led to
5900-655: The government's offer of accommodation in a West End hotel, preferring to stay in the East End , to live among working-class people, as he did in India. He based himself at Kingsley Hall in Powis Road, Bromley-by-Bow, for the three-month duration of his stay and was enthusiastically received by East Enders. The area suffered heavily in the Blitz and St Leonards Church was destroyed by enemy action in 1941. The area around Aberfeldy Street
6000-407: The grotesque, Lent and Carnival , officially approved culture and its riotous, and high-spirited underside." Several works of the time contained the same opposition. Chaucer's characters each express different—sometimes vastly different—views of reality, creating an atmosphere of testing, empathy , and relativism . As Helen Cooper says, "Different genres give different readings of the world:
6100-484: The heroic meter of the 15th and 16th centuries sometimes known as riding rhyme , and is an ancestor of iambic pentameter . Chaucer's verse is usually also characterised by couplet rhyme , but he avoided allowing couplets to become too prominent in The Canterbury Tales , and four of the tales (the Man of Law's, Clerk's, Prioress', and Second Nun's) use rhyme royal . In 1386, Chaucer became Controller of Customs and Justice of
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#17330861615696200-409: The hypothesis that the scribe who copied these two important manuscripts worked with Chaucer and knew him personally. This identification has been the subject of much controversy in the field of Middle English palaeography, though it is widely accepted as plausible. There is no consensus as to whether a complete version of the Tales exists, and also no consensus regarding Chaucer's intended order of
6300-426: The ill-effects of chivalry—the first making fun of chivalric rules and the second warning against violence. The Tales constantly reflect the conflict between classes. For example, the division of the three estates : the characters are all divided into three distinct classes, the classes being "those who pray" (the clergy), "those who fight" (the nobility), and "those who work" (the commoners and peasantry). Most of
6400-405: The intended audience of The Canterbury Tales is more difficult to determine. Chaucer was a courtier , leading some to believe that he was mainly a court poet who wrote exclusively for the nobility. He is referred to as a noble translator and poet by Eustache Deschamps and by his contemporary John Gower. It has been suggested that the poem was intended to be read aloud, which is probable as this
6500-488: The minor variations are due to copyists' errors, while it is suggested that in other cases Chaucer both added to his work and revised it as it was being copied and possibly as it was being distributed. There are no manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales surviving in Chaucer's own hand. The two earliest known manuscripts, which both appear to have been copied by the same scribe, are MS Peniarth 392 D (called " Hengwrt "), and
6600-644: The museum started preparing to close, and distributed its collections to various entities. The former contents were merged with the collection in the Leicester Gas Museum . The building is now occupied by offices. 51°31′20″N 0°0′18″W / 51.52222°N 0.00500°W / 51.52222; -0.00500 This article relating to a museum in the United Kingdom is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Bromley-by-Bow Bromley , commonly known as Bromley-by- Bow ,
6700-407: The new County of London in 1889. The County of London was replaced by Greater London in 1965. In 1606 a palace was built for James I facing the line of St Leonard's Street by John Thorpe . This was principally used as a hunting lodge but was a grand residence of 24 rooms, including a Stateroom, built along the lines of Hardwick Hall and Montacute House . Some of the stonework was quarried from
6800-523: The new parish were based on those of much older pre-existing estates. Bromley has a rich history, but many of its most historic buildings have been lost. It is connected to the London Underground and Docklands Light Railway . In early records the name first appears as Brambele , Brambelegh , or Brembeley and is likely to be derived from the Saxon words Brembel – a bramble, and lege –
6900-557: The opening lines of The Merchant's Prologue : No manuscript exists in Chaucer's own hand; all extant copies were made by scribes. Because the final -e sound was lost soon after Chaucer's time, scribes did not accurately copy it, and this gave scholars the impression that Chaucer himself was inconsistent in using it. It has now been established, however, that -e was an important part of Chaucer's grammar, and helped to distinguish singular adjectives from plural and subjunctive verbs from indicative. No other work prior to Chaucer's
7000-630: The parish of Stepney and covered the area of two much older units, the Manor of Bromley and the estate of the Nunnery of St Leonard. The area was part of the historic (or ancient) county of Middlesex , but military and most (or all) civil county functions were managed more locally, by the Tower Division (also known as the Tower Hamlets) . The role of the Tower Division ended when Bromley became part of
7100-626: The parish of Stepney . In 1868, the Poplar and Stepney Sick Asylum was opened on a site next to the present day Bromley-by-Bow tube station. It was renamed St Andrew's Hospital in 1921. It closed in 2006. A new housing development, William Guy Gardens, now occupies the site. Henry Grattan Guinness founded the East London Missionary Training Institute (also called Harley College) at Harley House in Bromley-by-Bow in 1873, with Dr. Thomas Barnardo as co-director. The school outgrew
7200-410: The pilgrim's actions. It is unclear whether Chaucer would intend for the reader to link his characters with actual persons. Instead, it appears that Chaucer creates fictional characters to be general representations of people in such fields of work. With an understanding of medieval society, one can detect subtle satire at work. The Tales reflect diverse views of the Church in Chaucer's England. After
7300-602: The premises and relocated in 1883, eventually becoming Cliff College . The Revd Richard Enraght , religious controversialist, was the Curate of St Michael and All Angels Church in St Leonards Road from 1884 to 1888 and Rector of St Gabriel Church (now demolished), Chrisp Street ( Poplar ), from 1888 to 1895. Between 1899 and 1965 the parish of Bromley St Leonard formed part of the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar , within
7400-567: The proportion of households in rented tenure was higher than the average for the borough. 60% of males were economically active with total unemployment being around 16% compared to 11% for the borough as a whole. Bromley-by-Bow station is located in the centre of Bromley and has the London Underground District and Hammersmith & City lines serving it. The Metropolitan line ceased serving Bromley in 1990 British Rail London, Tilbury & Southend Railway services stopped at
7500-447: The remains of the (now disused) priory. It remained in Royal use and was refurbished in the reigns of Charles II and James II and stables were added. During the 18th century, the frontage of the building was renewed and the palace was converted into two merchant houses. It went through a variety of uses, including a boarding school and a colour works. The house was demolished at the end of
7600-547: The route often being cited as amongst the least reliable in London. The area is connected to the National Road Network by the north–south A12 ( East Cross Route ), also east-west B140 Devons Road and Devas Street as well as local road Bromley High Street provides further access. The Lea Valley Walk on the River Lea Navigation and River Lea passes on the area eastern side for pedestrians and cyclists. To
7700-469: The same meter throughout almost all of his tales, with the exception of Sir Thopas and his prose tales. This is a line characterised by five stressed syllables, usually alternating with unstressed syllables to produce lines usually of ten syllables , but often eleven and occasionally nine; occasionally a caesura can be identified around the middle of a line. This metre was probably inspired by French and Italian forms. Chaucer's meter would later develop into
7800-496: The same word will mean entirely different things between classes. The word "pitee", for example, is a noble concept to the upper classes, while in the Merchant's Tale it refers to sexual intercourse. Again, however, tales such as the Nun's Priest's Tale show surprising skill with words among the lower classes of the group, while the Knight's Tale is at times extremely simple. Chaucer uses
7900-577: The school moved from the old site off Fairfield Road, in the neighbouring district of Bow to a new site in Bromley-by-Bow 1 mile to the south-east by Bow Locks , in a brand new building designed by van Heyningen and Haward Architects . Schools which are located near Bromley by Bow are Bow School secondary, Little House Nursery, Wellington Primary, Marner Primary, Old Palace Primary School, St Paul's Way Trust secondary, Phoenix primary and secondary and Central Foundation Girls' School secondary. Bromley-by-Bow Centre also offers adult training opportunities in
8000-467: The shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral . The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return. It has been suggested that the greatest contribution of The Canterbury Tales to English literature was the popularisation of the English vernacular in mainstream literature, as opposed to French, Italian or Latin . English had, however, been used as
8100-418: The south of the Road. The area has historically been known as both Bromley and Bromley-by-Bow . In 1967, the latter name was chosen as the new name for Bromley tube station , a change designed to prevent confusion with Bromley railway station in the London Borough of Bromley . The formal boundaries of the area were set when the area became a parish in 1537 when it split from Stepney . The boundaries of
8200-555: The south, the Limehouse Cut starts at the Bow Locks . Kingsley Hall is famous both for the visits of Mahatma Gandhi to the East End in 1931 and the therapeutic clinic run by the alternative psychologist R. D. Laing from 1965. Despite a severe fire in 1995, Kingsley Hall remains an active community centre. The Bromley-by-Bow Centre is known for it approach to integrated health care, with nursery care, training opportunities and
8300-539: The south, though the line of the historic boundary from Upper North Street heading south-east to the Lea, by the Leamouth Roundabout, has been blurred by patterns of urbanisation which did not follow the historic estate, parish and (for a time) ward boundaries that defined these areas. The area is bisected north to south by the Blackwall Tunnel Approach Road ( A12 ). The land between that road and
8400-546: The station until 1962. South Bromley railway station on the North London Railway between Bow and Poplar (East India Dock Road) stations opened in 1884, the station lay just to the north of the current Langdon Park DLR station which opened in 2009. London Buses routes 108 , 309 , 323 , 488 and D8 operate within the area. Route 108 uses the Blackwall Tunnel , a source of severe delays which leads to
8500-431: The stories. Textual and manuscript clues have been adduced to support the two most popular modern methods of ordering the tales. Some scholarly editions divide the Tales into ten "Fragments". The tales that make up a Fragment are closely related and contain internal indications of their order of presentation, usually with one character speaking to and then stepping aside for another character. However, between Fragments,
8600-562: The story Piers Plowman , a work written during Chaucer's lifetime. Chaucer describes a Plowman in the General Prologue of his tales, but never gives him his own tale. One tale, written by Thomas Occleve , describes the miracle of the Virgin and the Sleeveless Garment. Another tale features a pelican and a griffin debating church corruption, with the pelican taking a position of protest akin to John Wycliffe 's ideas. The Tale of Gamelyn
8700-428: The structure of the Tales is largely linear, with one story following another, it is also much more than that. In the General Prologue , Chaucer describes not the tales to be told, but the people who will tell them, making it clear that structure will depend on the characters rather than a general theme or moral. This idea is reinforced when the Miller interrupts to tell his tale after the Knight has finished his. Having
8800-497: The tales are interlinked by common themes, and some "quit" (reply to or retaliate against) other tales. Convention is followed when the Knight begins the game with a tale, as he represents the highest social class in the group. But when he is followed by the Miller, who represents a lower class, it sets the stage for the Tales to reflect both a respect for and a disregard for upper class rules. Helen Cooper, as well as Mikhail Bakhtin and Derek Brewer, call this opposition "the ordered and
8900-454: The tales of game and earnest, solas and sentence, will be set and interrupted. Here the sacred and profane adventure begins, but does not end. Here, the condition of peril is as prominent as that of protection. The act of pilgrimaging itself consists of moving from one urban space, through liminal rural space, to the next urban space with an ever fluctuating series of events and narratives punctuating those spaces. The goal of pilgrimage may well be
9000-402: The tales was at this time the Knight's, as it was full of both. The incompleteness of the Tales led several medieval authors to write additions and supplements to the tales to make them more complete. Some of the oldest existing manuscripts of the tales include new or modified tales, showing that even early on, such additions were being created. These emendations included various expansions of
9100-445: The theme decided on for the day. The idea of a pilgrimage to get such a diverse collection of people together for literary purposes was also unprecedented, though "the association of pilgrims and storytelling was a familiar one". Introducing a competition among the tales encourages the reader to compare the tales in all their variety, and allows Chaucer to showcase the breadth of his skill in different genres and literary forms. While
9200-461: The time encouraged such diversity, dividing literature (as Virgil suggests) into high, middle, and low styles as measured by the density of rhetorical forms and vocabulary. Another popular method of division came from St. Augustine , who focused more on audience response and less on subject matter (a Virgilian concern). Augustine divided literature into "majestic persuades", "temperate pleases", and "subdued teaches". Writers were encouraged to write in
9300-573: The time of William the Conqueror and mentioned in the General Prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer 's Canterbury Tales . It was destroyed at the time of the Dissolution in 1536, and the manor and lands passed to Sir Ralph Sadleir , who lived at Sutton House in Homerton and was privy councillor to Henry VIII . The exception was the priory chapel which was retained. The small Tudor period Bromley Hall
9400-435: The time of William the Conqueror and mentioned in the General Prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer 's Canterbury Tales . It was destroyed at the time of the Dissolution in 1536, and the manor and lands passed to Sir Ralph Sadleir , who lived at Sutton House in Homerton and was privy councillor to Henry VIII . The priory chapel was retained and turned into the parish church for a new parish, Bromley St Leonard, split from
9500-543: The word knight was [kniçt] , with both the k and the gh pronounced, not / n aɪ t / . In some cases, vowel letters in Middle English were pronounced very differently from Modern English, because the Great Vowel Shift had not yet happened. For instance, the long e in wepyng "weeping" was pronounced as [eː] , as in modern German or Italian, not as / iː / . Below is an IPA transcription of
9600-411: Was a common activity at the time. However, it also seems to have been intended for private reading, since Chaucer frequently refers to himself as the writer, rather than the speaker, of the work. Determining the intended audience directly from the text is even more difficult, since the audience is part of the story. This makes it difficult to tell when Chaucer is writing to the fictional pilgrim audience or
9700-427: Was built in the late 15th century as the manor house of Lower Bromley. The house was radically remodeled soon after 1700 and over the following centuries served as a calico printing works, gentleman's seat, gunpowder factory, charity home and a carpet warehouse. It is thought to be the oldest brick house in London. The priory chapel was turned into the parish church for a new parish, Bromley St Leonard, which split from
9800-548: Was heavily bombed and subsequently redeveloped into the Aberfeldy Estate in 1947. The ruins and much of the churchyard were swept away when the Blackwall Tunnel Approach Road was built through the area in the 1960s. The area loosely approximates to three wards in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets . The councillors elected in May 2018 were: Bromley-by-Bow is a part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and takes in parts of
9900-507: Was redeveloped and split into studio workshops (live/work units) and sold by JJAK (Construction) Ltd for leaseholders to fit out. The first building to be converted was Limehouse Cut, varying in size between 580 to 1,610 sq ft (54 to 150 m ). The building was featured in the Sunday Times in June 1986 and again in 1989. The London Thames Gateway Development Corporation 's aims for
10000-419: Was the first author to use the work of these last two. Boethius ' Consolation of Philosophy appears in several tales, as do the works of John Gower , a friend of Chaucer's. Chaucer also seems to have borrowed from numerous religious encyclopaedias and liturgical writings, such as John Bromyard 's Summa praedicantium , a preacher's handbook, and Jerome 's Adversus Jovinianum . Many scholars say there
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