Identifier: storyofenglishli00lill (find matches)
Title: The story of English literature for young readers
Year: 1879 (1870s)
Authors: Lillie, Lucy C. (Lucy Cecil), b. 1855
Subjects: English literature
Publisher: Boston, D. Lothrop and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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nt in the company im-pressed him. He proposed that, as the road to Can-terbury was very long and tiresome, each one of thepilgrims should agree to tell two stories on the way jand he whose tale was the best should have a finesupper at the Tabard on their return. To this, allthe company cheerfully agreed, and the next day theyrode forth. Can you not fancy them clattering outof the old Tabard courtyard and down the road to-wards Canterbury ? Heads here and there were putout of the windows as they passed. It must havebeen quite a fine sight for the neighborhood. At a point often mentioned by old writers, St.Thomas Watering, which was two miles on the way,the first story-teller was appointed. It was the knight,and he chose an old subject, The Story of Palamonand Arcite. Chaucer has taken the plot of this story from Boc-caccio, of whose Decameron I have already told * The Summoner called people before the courts when they had trans-gressed the law. These officers were universally detested.
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For Young Readers. 45 you. It is one of the most beautiful of the Canter-bury Tales, and shows most strongly Chaucers loveof warlike glory, as well as the importance whichused to be attached to love affairs. Although an oldmythological story, and the characters from ancienttimes, Chaucer has mixed many of the fashions ofhis own day with old heathen practices ; but this wasvery common with writers of the Fourteenth century,just as painters of the same time represented Saintsand Madonnas in the dress of their own period. Isuppose they considered it the best way in which tointerest their readers, whose historical and literaryknowledge was generally too slight to make them ap-preciate stories entirely of the past. The story is of two brothers, or cousins, Palamonand Arcite, rich young men of Thebes who were cap-tured by Theseus,- Duke of Athens, and imprisonedin a tower within his palace gates. Now the Dukehad a very beautiful sister-in-law named Emelye,and she, like all the English maide

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