Father of ''english prose'

Famous work

• "The travel of Sir John Mandeville" - the travels memoir which first circulated between 1357 and 1371- earliest surviving text in French.
• translated in many languages and acquired popularity

Arousing new spirit of independence and moral earnestness which heralded the Reformation

• Proved that prose was suited for far wider purposes than that of keeping prosaic records and chronicles
  

Attacked the privilege status of the clergy and the luxury and pomp of local parishes and their ceremonies

Completed the translation of the bible into the common vernacular - Wycliffe bible

His followers were known as Lollards

• advocating predestination (all events have been willed by god)
• Iconoclasm (destruction of icons and other images and monuments - for religion or political reasons)
  - caesaropapism (making secular authority superior to spiritual authority of the church)

Chief work - Confession Amantis

• consists of collection of romantic stories held together by a slender thread of narrative

  
  

• genuine poetic quality

  
  

• christian structure of confession - narrative frame

  
  

Wrote three long poems -

• Speculam Melantis in French

  
  

• Vox Clamantis in Latin

  
  

• Confessio Amantis in English

  
  
  

man of masses - challenged the church and it's beliefs

Attacks -

• the social and ecclesiastical abuses of the day
• Avarice (extreme greed) and tyranny of the aristocracy
  

Great works

• " The Pilgrim's Progress" - arises out of dream and take human soul through the fouls and vices of life.

  
  

• " Piers - The Plowman" - 1360 -87 -- an allegory; with complex religious themes

Similarities between Wycliffe and Langland

• questioned the indulgences and pilgrimages
• promoted the use of value vernacular in preaching
• attacked clerical corruption and advocated dis-endowment.

well known as the "father of english poetry" or "the morning star of renaissance"
"Prince of plagiarists"
"Father of English novel"

claims to be the "first great national poet og England"

famous as one of the main world's three or four story tellers