Answer to Question 1
The origins of the Hundred Years' War lay in the feudal histories of France and England. Larger and more protracted than any medieval conflict, the Hundred Years' War was the result of the long-standing English claim to continental lands held by the Norman rulers of England, whose ancestors were vassals of the French king. French efforts to wrest these feudal territories from English hands ignited decades of hostility and chronic resentment between the two burgeoning nation-states. But the immediate cause of the war was the English claim to the French throne, occasioned by the death of Charles, the last of the male heirs in a long line of French kings.
Answer to Question 2
Fourteenth-century Europeans manifested an unprecedented preoccupation with differences in class, gender, and personality. Both in literature and in art, there emerged a new fidelity to nature and to personal experience in the everyday world. This close, objective attention to human society and social interaction may be described as Social Realism. The tales of Baccaccio's Decameron illustrate this focus, featuring realistically conceived, high-spirited characters who prize cleverness, good humor, and the world of the flesh over the classic medieval virtues of chivalry, piety, and humility.
Realism was also found in the visual arts. The artist Giotto, for example, gave weight, volume, and emotional resonance to figures whose gravity and dignity call to mind Classical sculpture. Like the characters in Boccaccio's Decameron, those in Giotto's paintings are convincingly human. Similarly, in religious art, figures became at once more pictorial and more detailed. In Claus Sluter's Well of Moses, facial features of the prophets are individualized so as to render each one with a distinctive personality. Devotional Realism is equally apparent in illuminated manuscripts, and especially in the popular prayer book known as the Book of Hours. In the miniatures of these prayer books, scenes from sacred history are filled with realistic and homely details drawn from everyday life.
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