Death, 1349. ITALY. Dante, 1265-1321. Divina Commedia," begun about 1307. Petrarch, 1304-1374. Sonnets and Poems. Petrarch crowned at Rome, 1341. Boccaccio, 1313-1375. Decameron," 1350. 64 'Teseide." Richard II., Chaucer taken pris- First statute of Præmu War between Florence 1377-1399. Henry IV., 1399-1413. oner by the French, nire, 1353 1359; his "Dethe Battle of Poictiers, 1356. of Blanche the Duch ess," 1369; employed Peace of Bretigny, 1360. on a mission to Pisa! and Genoa, meets Renewal of French War, Petrarch, 1372; Ap- 1368. pointed Controller of Customs, 1374. Uprising of Jack Straw, 1378. John Barbour: "The Wat Tyler's revolt, 1381. Bruce," 1375. Condemnation of Wyclif and Pisa. English auxiliaries employed by the latter, 1362. Artists: Giotto, 1276-1336. Taddeo Gaddi, 13001366. Ghiberti, 1378-1455. Brunelleschi, 13771446. GERMANY. The Meistersinger. Hubrecht Van Eyck FRANCE. Froissart, 1337-1410. Chronicles. 1387. THE COMING OF THE NEW LEARNING TO ENGLAND. THE century following the death of Chaucer is generally regarded as "the most barren" in the history of the literature. Indeed, after the year 1400, we find little evidence of a fresh and vigorous life in English literature until the year 1579, when Edmund Spenser's first poem was given to the world. Yet the fifteenth century is nevertheless of far-reaching importance in the history of England's mental growth. It was a time of national education. If England did not produce great literature, she received from many sources new thoughts and impulses, which replenished and broadened her life, and which later found expression in her literary work. In the fifteenth century England passed definitely out of the bounds of the Middle Ages, and came to share as a nation in the inspiration of the Renaissance, which, in the century before, only such rare individual minds as Chaucer and Wyclif had known by anticipation. The feudal society of the middle ages was finally shattered in England by the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485), in which great numbers of the old nobility perished. The outworn scholastic learning, Learning. the relic of the medieval monastic schools, was cast aside, and the reorganization of the entire educational 65 The New |