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14th century in literature

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Events

  • 1323 – The name Pléiade is adopted by a group of fourteen poets (seven men and seven women) in Toulouse.
  • 1324: 3 May (Holy Cross Day) – The Consistori del Gay Saber, founded the previous year in Toulouse to revive and perpetuate the lyric poetry of the Old Occitan troubadors, holds its first contest. Arnaut Vidal de Castelnou d'Ari wins the violeta d'or (golden violet) for a sirventes in praise of the Virgin Mary. At about this date, Raimon de Cornet writes Doctrinal de trobar in support of the aims of the Gay Saber.
  • 1327
    • Between 20 January and 21 September – The deposed King Edward II of England perhaps writes the "Lament of Edward II".
    • 6 April (Good Friday) – Tuscan writer Petrarch sees a woman he names Laura in the church of Sainte-Claire d'Avignon, which awakes in him a lasting passion. He writes a series of sonnets and other poems in Italian dedicated to her up to about 1368, which are collected into Il Canzoniere, an influential model for Renaissance culture.
    • 27 August – Death of Thomas Cobham, Bishop of Worcester in England. His books are bequeathed to the University of Oxford where they are installed in the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, forming the university's first library.
  • 1329: February – French poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut is brought to the Siege of Medvėgalis by John of Bohemia so the king's crusading deeds can be commemorated in song and poetry.
  • c. 1330 – Production of the Macclesfield Psalter in East Anglia.
  • 1331 – Production of the Nuremberg Mahzor.
  • 1341: 8 April – Petrarch becomes poet laureate at a ceremony in Rome.
  • 1357 – The Polychronicon concludes, Ranulf Higden having ceased work on it at least a dozen years earlier.
  • 1360 – The future English writer Geoffrey Chaucer is captured by the French during the Reims campaign of the Hundred Years' War and ransomed by King Edward III of England.
  • 1362: September – Petrarch's library is donated to the Republic of Venice, although subsequently dispersed.
  • 1368
  • 1370–1398 – Approximate date of production of the earliest part of the Sankt Florian Psalter, one of the earliest surviving texts to use the Polish language.
  • 1372 – Old Permic alphabet introduced by Stephen of Perm.
  • 1374
    • 23 April: English writer Geoffrey Chaucer is granted a gallon of wine a day for the rest of his life by order of King Edward III of England in recognition of his services.
    • Ludolph of Saxony completes his Vita Christi, which appears first in book form in 1474 and becomes an influence on St Ignatius Loyola in the early 16th century.
  • 1377 – Production of the earliest known copy of the Laurentian Codex.
  • 1381: 30 May–November – Peasants' Revolt in England. Preacher John Ball apparently cites the poem Piers Plowman (which is revised during this decade) and John Gower includes an account of the events in his Vox Clamantis. On 15 June, the University of Cambridge's library and archives are burnt in the centre of the town, with one Margery Starre leading the mob in a dance to the rallying cry "Away with the learning of clerks, away with it!". The events inspire the late 16th century play The Life and Death of Jack Straw, Robert Southey's dramatic poem Wat Tyler (1794), and novels such as Pierce Egan the Younger's Wat Tyler (1841), William Harrison Ainsworth's Merry England (1874) and William Morris's A Dream of John Ball (1886).
  • 1382 – Earliest recorded appearance of Wycliffe's Bible.
  • 1384 – Henry of Langenstein writes his letter, De scismate, to Echard von Dersch, Bishop of Worms.
  • 1386: October – Geoffrey Chaucer is obliged to give up most of his official offices in London and retires to Kent where he may work on The Canterbury Tales.
  • 1388 – Revision of Wycliffe's Bible is completed by John Purvey, and Wyclif's followers, known as Lollards, begin to be persecuted in England.
  • 1390–1 – Production of the Book of Ballymote in Ireland.
  • 1390s – Production of the Yellow Book of Lecan in Ireland.
  • 1397 – Production of the Kiev Psalter in Kiev Rus.
  • 1398 – The early 13th century carved wooden text of the Tripitaka Koreana is moved to the Haeinsa Buddhist temple in modern-day South Korea, where it will remain into the 21st century.
  • unknown dates
    • The prose original of the Amadis de Gaula is produced (or perhaps translated into Old Spanish from an earlier 14th-century version), perhaps by the knight Vasco de Lobeira or the troubador João de Lobeira.
    • Madhava Kandali produces the Saptakanda Ramayana (a retelling of the Ramayana), one of the earliest written examples of the Assamese language and the first translation from Sanskrit into one of the modern regional Indo-Aryan languages.
    • The Bardo Thodol is revealed to the tertön Karma Lingpa.

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