#TeamEnglish@CMS_Kottayam: The learner in me, hand in hand with the teacher in you!

The General Introduction Explained: The first 42 lines of “The Prologue” forms the General Introduction. The narrator opens the General Prologue with a description of the return of spring. He describes the April rains, the burgeoning flowers and leaves, and the chirping birds. Around this time of year, the narrator says, people begin to feel the desire to go on a pilgrimage. Many devout English pilgrims set off to visit shrines in distant holy lands, but even more choose to travel to Canterbury to visit the relics of Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, where they thank the martyr for having helped them when they were in need.  The narrator tells us that as he prepared to go on such a pilgrimage, staying at a tavern in Southwark called the Tabard Inn, a great company of twenty-nine travelers entered. The number can be disputed. How many were there in the group that sets off from Tabard Inn? Does the number 29 include the host? And, there was the yeoman who joined them ...

  Renaissance The word ‘renaissance’ is of French origin, and means ‘rebirth’. Renaissance is a social wave that marks the beginning of the Modern Age in Europe. Dating a period from the 14th to the 17th century, this is regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It started as a cultural movement in Italy in the Medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe. Renaissance, (French: “Rebirth”) period in European civilization immediately following the Middle Ages and conventionally held to have been characterized by a surge of interest in Classical scholarship and values. The Renaissance also witnessed the discovery and exploration of new continents, the substitution of the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, the decline of the feudal system and the growth of commerce, and the invention or application of such potentially powerful innovations as paper, printing, the mariner’s compass, and gunpowder. To the scholars and thinkers of ...