The Cultural World of the Fourteenth Century
The 14th century wasn't completely bad what with the downfall of the Church and the rapid spread of the Black Death, but there was also a blossom of writings in the vernacular along with some new art.
The Development of Vernacular Literature
While Latin is thought of as one of the major languages used in Medieval Europe, and was in the Church and in government affairs, the 14th century say the birth of the vernacular language. Three influential men sparked the beginning of the Italian vernacular, and in fact they based the language off of a Tuscan dialect one might have used in Middle Age Florence.
Dante
Dante was a former political officer holder in Florence who came from a once wealthy family. He lived from 1265 to 1321 and was famously exiled in 1302. After being exiled he wrote his greatest work, The Divine Comedy, a three part novel that describes the inner workings of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven as Dante, a character in his own work, travels with his guide, Virgil, through the three regions. While traveling with Virgil Dante throws in hateful remarks and slanders against the political officials in Florence he hated and against those specifically who contributed to his exile. All three parts of The Divine Comedy is written in the original Italian Vernacular.
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) was also from Florence, but didn't spend much time in the city. He's most famous for writing his sonnets in the Italian vernacular. Many of his sonnets, however, had the same theme. He consistently based his writings on a married woman he was infatuated with. He met her in the year 1327. The fact the Petrarch was obsessed with this woman was not an uncommon theme in Medieval Europe, but usually it was with a fictional woman of perfection, but Petrarch was fixed a a real flesh and blood woman.
Boccaccio
Boccaccio was the third and final major contributor to the start of the Italian Vernacular. Like both Dante and Petrarch, Boccaccio was a Florentine and spent much time outside of Florence. Boccaccio lived from 1313 to 1375 and similar to Petrarch he fell madly in love with an aristocratic woman while working in Naples. At the time he had been writing poetry, but was instantly inspired by the woman and began to compose Romantic Prose which he is now famous for. Likely his best work and his most notorious work is that of the Decameron,a story of ten youths who tell stories to pass the time. The story was set in the time of the Black Death. While he writings were good he began to grow seemingly more and more dark with age, maybe even more skeptical and shrewd. He later renounced his earlier writings saying that they were foolishness and he was even on the verge of deeming them sinful.
Chaucer
While Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio were helping to institute the Italian Vernacular, Chaucer, another famous author, was working with the rudimentary forms of the English Vernacular. Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340-1400), a Christian, is most famous for his literary work The Canterbury Tails. The story portrays 29 individual people, all of whom come from different social backgrounds. the 29 pilgrims set out on a journey to the tomb of St. Thomas in Canterbury. They find themselves in a contest amongst each other to pass the time. The contest being that whoever can tell the best story is bought dinner by the others after the journey. Through this work Chaucer is not only able to promote the new English Vernacular, but he is also able to articulate all types of people form the time, while at the same time articulate and relate to the reader modern day personalities. Within the book Chaucer also criticizes the Church for all of its mistakes; just another source of the Church's problems.
Christine de Pizan
Yet another promoter of the vernacular, this time that of the French. Christine (c. 1364-1430) was a woman who took a leap of faith by venturing into the realm of writing. At the time she and her family were financially unstable due to the death of her husband and the money it cost her to care for her three children. She is most famous for her work with the book The Book of the City of Ladies. In her novel she vents about the poor treatment of women ons mans part and that they are treated as less by male authors and are labeled as stupid. She argues that it's simply because they aren't allowed to attend the same schools as men and by the end of her work is encouraging the women to stand up for themselves.