Geoffrey Chaucer 1342-1400 English Writer

 

Geoffrey Chaucer is one of England's greatest poets and is considered the outstanding English writer before Shakespeare. Because Chaucer wrote in a dialect of Middle English that is the ancestor of modern English, modern readers can understand him but with some difficulty. This is a passage from Chaucer's Troilus and Criseide:

 

In hevene and helle, in erthe and salte see

Is felt thy might, if that I wel discerne;

As man, brid, best, fissh, herbe, and grene tree

 

Chaucer led a very active life as a soldier, a courtier, and a diplomat. As a member of Edward III's army laying siege to Reims, Chaucer was captured by the French but ransomed by the king. He served in the courts of Edward III, Richard II, and Henry IV. He participated in diplomatic missions to France, Spain, Flanders, and Italy. During his missions to Italy, he came across the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio--authors who were to have a great influence on his own writing. Although a successful diplomat, Chaucer apparently was not always diplomatic in his personal life since, at one point, he was fined for beating a Franciscan friar in a London street.

 

Chaucer's best know work is The Canterbury Tales. It describes a story telling contest among a group of pilgrims as they travel on horseback to the shrine of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury. The pilgrims are drawn from many walks of life--knight, monk, merchant, lawyer, etc.--and the stories are told in a variety of literary genres. Chaucer makes use of this variety of materials to make acute observations about daily life and to reflect on the complexity and humor of the human condition.