The loss of French speakers, particularly those who could teach it, led to the rise of Middle English, the language that gives Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales such richness. The plague had numerous cultural consequences in England. To make matters worse, a peasant tax revolt broke out in England in 1381, which ended in King Richard II being dethroned. There were other outbreaks throughout the last quarter of the 14th century, and the plague continued to threaten England well into the 15th century (Borsch). All of Europe was similarly affected, with as much as 45 percent of the continent’s population dying from the Black Death in less than a decade (Borsch). The relevant statistics are difficult to gauge accurately, but estimates are that from a population of about 6 million people in 1300, as many as four million are thought to have died from the outbreak of bubonic plague that hit England in the 1340s (Borsch, 2005). The great plague that devastated England in the mid-14th century wiped out entire villages and filled the streets of London with cartloads of bloated corpses.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |