Geoffrey Chaucer

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English Literature

Geoffrey Chaucer (born 1340/44, died 1400)

The author of The Canterbury Tales, is called the Father of English literature for his crucial contribution in using English at a time when much court poetry was still written in Anglo-Norman or Latin.
Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London, the son of a prosperous wine merchant . Little is known of his early education, but his works show that he could read French, Latin, and Italian.
In 1359-1360 Chaucer went to France with Edward III's army during the Hundred Years' War. There is no certain information of his life from 1361 until c.1366, when he perhaps married Philippa Roet, the sister of John Gaunt's future wife. Philippa died in 1387 Between 1367 and 1378 Chaucer made several journeys abroad on diplomatic and commercial missions, he went to Italy where he became interested in Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio . For example Troylus and Criseyde (1380-1385),is based on Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato.
Chaucer died in London in 1400. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in the part of the church, which afterwards was called Poet's Corner.

The works

Chaucer took his narrative inspiration for his works from several sources, in fact his works can be divided in three period:
The French period
The Boke of the Duchesse (ca1369) - an elegy written for the death of Blanche Duchess Lancaster, first wife of his patron John Gaunt
The Romaunt of the Rose ( before 1373) – a collection of courtly love conventions translated from French.

The Italian period
The Parliament of Foules ( ca.1380) –a poem celebrating St. Valentine’s Day, whose
protagonists are birds and beasts.
The House of Fame ( ca.1383) – a dream vision parodying the convention of courtly love.
Troylus and Criseyde ( 1380-1385) –
The Legend of good women (ca.1385) – the first documented attempt at using the English couplet.

The English period
The Canterbury Tales ( ca.1387) – his masterpiece

The Canterbury Tales

Chaucer as pilgrim

Representatives of social classes

All the pilgrims

The Ellesmere Manuscript

The plot

The book, which was left unfinished when the author died, depicts a pilgrimage by some 30 people, who are going on a spring day in April to the shrine of the martyr, St. Thomas Becket. On the way to Canterbury they enjoy themselves by telling stories. Among the group of pilgrims there are a knight, a monk, a prioress, a plowman, a miller, a merchant, a clerk, and an oft-widowed wife from Bath. The stories are interlinked with interludes in which the characters talk with each other, revealing much about themselves. The General Prologue is the frame for the whole story, here the author states the setting in time and place, the description of the characters, and he expresses in the first person according to the features of the Medieval Narrative Poem

Listen to the musicality of the Middle English version of the Prologue, reading its Modern English version

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