The same spirit which demanded emancipation on the part of the working
classes showed itself in literature. We have already seen (S246) how,
in the previous reign, Langland, in his poem of "Piers Plowman," gave
bold utterance to the growing discontent of the times in his
declaration that the rich and great destroyed the poor.
In a different spirit, Chaucer, "the morning star of English song,"
now began (1390?) to write his "Canterbury Tales," a series of stories
in verse, supposed to be told by a merry band of pilgrims on their way
from the Tabard Inn in Southwark, London, to the shrine of St. Thomas
Becket in Canterbury (S170).
There is little of Langland's complaint in Chaucer, for he was
generally a favorite at court, seeing mainly the bright side of life,
and sure of his yearly allowance of money and daily pitcher of wine
from the royal bounty. Yet, with all his mirth, there is a vein of
playful satire in his description of men and things. His pictures of
jolly monks and easy-going churchmen, with his lines addressed to his
purse as his "saviour, as down in this world here," show that he saw
beneath the surface of things. He too was thinking, at least at
times, of the manifold evils of poverty and of that danger springing
from religious indifference which poor Langland had taken so much to
heart.