Excerpt from The Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer: A New Text, With Illustrative Notes During this latter period there had been a great movement in intelligence and art throughout Europe, which was showing itself sometimes in one place and sometimes in another, and which was giving great promises of a Splendid future. By the end of the thirteenth century it broke out in Italy in Dante, and a little later in Petrarch. In France it showed itself in a multi tude of poetical compositions, remarkable for their spirit and harmony of versification. In England it became magnificently embodied in Chaucer, almost to rise and die with him; for two centuries passed away before another poet was produced who could lay any claim to rivalry with his great predecessor. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.