A Comparison of Chaucer's Nonne Presstes Tale and Spenser's Mother Hubberd's Tale
"The fable in general, and the beast-fable in particular, are among the very oldest and most universal of the known forms of literature." A fresh and special development of it took place about the twelfth century, or earlier, somewhere in the central part of the northern coast district of the old Frankish empire, and made such an appeal to the imagination of the people that the bulk is very great, especially in the French forms, which, taken all together, amount to about one hundred thousand lines.
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