Matthew Arnold is of the view
that England is much obliged to France in the field of poetry. The early poetry of England is ‘indissolubly
connected’ to the early French poetry. In
his opinion the 12th and the 13th centuries were the
seed-time of all modern language and literature. At that time the poetry of France had a clear
predominance in Europe. The romance-poetry
of Europe is French. It is the pride of
French literature. The romance-poetry
was at its height in the middle age. In the
fourteenth century there came an English man who nourished on this poetry. He got his words, rhyme and metre from this
poetry. Matthew Arnold names this person
as Chaucer. In fact Chaucer received the
elements of the romantic poetry immediately, from the Italians, especially from
Dante. But the Italians got this stuff
from the French.