Geoffrey Chaucer

Authors and works Geoffrey Chaucer (1343?-1400)

A brief bio

Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London, some time around 1343; his father was a wine merchant. In 1357 Chaucer became a page to Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster, and this is the first evidence of his life-long connection with the court. In 1359, during the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453), a series of conflicts between England and France, he was taken prisoner in France and King Edward III paid the large sum of sixteen pounds for his release. In 1366 he married Philippa Roet, a lady in waiting to Queen Philippa. In 1372 he made his first journey to Italy on a diplomatic mission. In 1374 he was appointed Controller of Customs in the port of London and then employed as an envoy to France and Italy in 1378. He died in London before completing his most important work, The Canterbury Tales, and was buried in Westminster Abbey because of his services to the crown, in what is now known as Poets’ Corner.

▼ WORKS

Troilus and Criseyde 1385?

The Book of the Duchess 1389?

The Canterbury Tales 1387-1400 (unfinished)

Profile

Fourteenth-century English society was in a state of accelerating transition from the feudal system to new social forms. Chaucer was particularly sensitive to these changes and he masterfully portrayed them in his best work, The Canterbury Tales. A very cultured man, Geoffrey Chaucer knew Italian and French and travelled to both countries. At a time when French and Latin were the languages of culture, he decided to write in English, which was a real revolution in the intellectual scenario of his time. He also introduced metrical innovations in poetry, such as the line based on syllables and rhyme, and new devices in prose fiction, such as humour, characterisation and plot development. In his earliest production, Chaucer experimented with octosyllabic couplets. His first work was probably the translation of a long French love poem, the Roman de la Rose, followed by The Book of the Duchess, an elegy on the death of a noble woman killed by the plague, and The House of Fame, an unfinished work full of irony and vivid characterisation. In The Parliament of Fowls and the long narrative poem Troilus and Cryseide he used a seven-line stanza, called ‘rhyme-royal’, and in The Legend of Good Women he created the rhyming pentameter, or ‘heroic couplet’ (→ p. 532), which became the main metre of The Canterbury Tales.

Language and themes

Chaucer wrote in one of the Middle English dialects – the East-Midland dialect – and enriched it through French borrowings: the result was psychological realism and an effective narrative. The tone varies from ironical and mocking to serious and thoughtful. Recurrent themes are love and marriage, explored from different angles (i.e. sensual love and platonic love, women’s submission to men and their dominance in the couple). The sources of the tales range from popular tradition to French poets, to ancient classics. Many of them had a long tradition and already existed in different versions.

“[Chaucer] had to create the English language and to establish its literary traditions. To do this he had to turn to the literature of France and bring something of its elegance to East

Midland English. He ransacked the tales and histories of Europe to find subject matter.

But, finally, in his masterpiece he gave literature something completely new: pictures of people who are real and a view of life which, in its tolerance, humour, scepticism, passion, and love of humanity, we can only call ‘modern’.”(A. Burgess, English Literature)